Ken Burns on finding young Alexander Vindman in Brooklyn

It’s almost too good to be true.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who emerged this week as a central figure in the impeachment saga engulfing Washington, is pictured as a child in a 1985 documentary by Ken Burns. Burns is the chronicler of sweeping American histories who specializes in the interplay between movers-and-shakers and the grunts on the ground, the ordinary people. Except:

“There’s no such thing as ordinary people,” Burns said in a Wednesday phone interview.

That point is underscored by Vindman’s brief ordinary-person appearance in “The Statue of Liberty,” co-produced by Burns and cinematographer Buddy Squires.

The film covers both the construction of the iconic monument and what liberty means to Americans. Burns says immigrants answered that question best. So he went in search of them: a Holocaust survivor, elderly Italians and a Haitian in an immigration detention center. Mostly, Burns looked for immigrants in Brooklyn.

“Even then, Brooklyn meant the melting pot,” Burns says.

That's where he and his camera happened upon Vindman and his twin brother, in the longtime newcomer enclave of Brighton Beach. They were sitting on a bench on what appears to be the boardwalk with an elderly woman between them. Burns asked them some questions, and you can see the results in the clip. 

Speaking over each other, they talk excitedly about coming from Kiev to the United States.

“Our mother died so we went to Italy, then we came here,” one of them says. They’re identical: Burns isn’t exactly sure which brother is which, though both would grow up to serve in the U.S. Army en route to holding national security roles — Yevgeny is a lawyer on the National Security Council — and play at least a part in American history.

Burns says their level of assimilation was clear compared to that of the elderly woman, who did not seem comfortable with English. Plus they were thrilled to talk in the clip, which was unearthed by The Washington Post.

Burns suggests that the brothers had fully drunk “the intoxicating elixir of freedom.”

What does Vindman the citizen represent today, after reportedly testifying about his concern about President Trump’s fateful call with the Ukrainian president — an incident that launched an official presidential impeachment inquiry?

“I think he just represents the continuation of the American dream,” says Burns.

Vindman the immigrant reportedly called himself a patriot during his testimony, even as commentators on the right and the president himself began trying to impugn his credibility.

The question of “who we are” as a country, Burns said, has been questioned recently, as it has in various anti-immigrant moments of the past.

“Obviously, this assumption that we had of our values has come into question recently,” he said, “and I think it might be important to just understand how many people who are the fabric of who we are now, either in the military or just in the corner store or whatever it is, that they represent who we are.”

Mark Chiusano is a member of Newsday's editorial board.