re: Vietnam. Was Hugh Thompson Jr a hero or traitor?

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Was he just flying around and saw the shooting? How did he know what was going on?

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I don't remember Thompson's exact duties, but there were plenty of helicopters overhead that day - observation, command & control, gunships, whatever...
The condensed version is that while monitoring the ground troops radio frequencies, Thompson was hearing that there were no friendly casualties and minimal or no enemy resistance. But when he looked down, he could see a lot of shooting and hootches burning. He radiod several times "There's a lot of shooting down there. What's going on with all the shooting?" He finally got real low and saw dead women, children and old men in a ditch.

He confronted some infantrymen about what was happening and they basically told him to frick off. I think he took one or two wounded Vietnamese back to his base. I know he went into his TOC after re-fueling and kind of got blown off by his superiors. They either knew or didn't care that civilians were being killed.

The Army didn't want the embarrassment and covered it up. It didn't come to light until an infantryman went public after his tour of duty was completed. It was like a year or two after the incident.