In 1964, a Santa Monica think tank, the RAND Corporation, initiated an unprecedented social science study of the communist insurgency in South Vietnam to assess “Viet Cong Motivation and Morale.” As U.S. involvement in Vietnam deepened, this research morphed into the most extensive wartime study of insurgency in modern history. Duong Van Mai (Elliott), newly returned to Saigon after graduating from Georgetown, joined the RAND team as an interviewer. David Elliott, a graduate of Yale and a veteran of the US Army Signal Intelligence Team in Saigon, joined soon after. David and Mai first met in Washington, reconnected in Saigon, soon after married and worked together over the next several years. They produced many of RAND’s landmark reports on the insurgency, reports that are now public and prized by scholars of the Vietnam War. David and Mai join UCR students for a conversation about their experiences in Vietnam.