Editing My Lai massacre (section)

=== Public revelation and reaction ===

Under mounting pressure caused by Ridenhour's letter, on 9 September 1969, the Army quietly charged Calley with six specifications of [[Murder#Degrees of murder|premeditated murder]] for the deaths of 109 South Vietnamese civilians near the village of Sơn Mỹ, at a [[hamlet (place)|hamlet]] called simply "My Lai".<ref name=Miscue_article /><ref>{{Cite book|last=Oliver|first=Kendrick|title=The My Lai Massacre in American History and Memory|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1wisoI-wP5MC&pg=PA44|year=2006|publisher=Manchester University Press|isbn=978-0719068904|pages=43–44}}</ref> Calley's court martial was not released to the press and did not commence until over a year later in November 1970. However, word of Calley's prosecution found its way to American investigative reporter and freelance journalist [[Seymour Hersh]].<ref>Oliver, Kendrick. "Coming to Terms with the Past: My Lai", ''History Today'', 00182753, February 2006, Vol. 56, Issue 2.</ref>

My Lai was first revealed to the public on 13 November 1969—more than a year and a half after the incident—when Hersh published a story through the [[Dispatch News Service]]. After extensive interviews with Calley, Hersh broke the Mỹ Lai story in 35 newspapers; additionally, the ''[[Alabama Journal]]'' in Montgomery and ''[[the New York Times]]'' ran separate stories on the allegations against Calley on 12 and 13 November, respectively.<ref name=Miscue_article>{{cite magazine |date=5 December 1969|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,901651,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081214144136/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,901651,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=December 14, 2008|title=The Press: Miscue on the Massacre |magazine=Time |access-date=18 June 2011}}</ref> On 20 November, explicit color photographs and eye-witness testimony of the massacre taken by U.S. Army combat photographer [[Ronald L. Haeberle]] were published in ''[[The Plain Dealer|The Cleveland Plain Dealer]]''. The same day, ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'', ''[[Life (magazine)|Life]]'' and ''[[Newsweek]]'' all covered the story, and [[CBS]] televised an interview with Paul Meadlo, a soldier in Calley's unit during the massacre.<ref>{{cite news|date=21 September 2017|url=http://www.cleveland.com/plain-dealer-library/index.ssf/2009/11/plain_dealer_exclusive_my_lai_massacre_photos_by_ronald_haeberle.html|title=Plain Dealer exclusive in 1969: My Lai massacre photos by Ronald Haeberle|newspaper=The Plain Dealer|access-date=25 February 2018}}</ref> From the U.S. Government and Army's point of view, Haeberle's photos transformed the massacre from potentially manageable to a very serious problem. The day after their publication, [[Melvin Laird]] the [[United States Secretary of Defense|Secretary of Defense]] discussed them with [[Henry Kissinger]] who was at the time [[National Security Advisor (United States)|National Security Advisor]] to President [[Richard Nixon]]. Laird was recorded as saying that while he would like "to sweep it under the rug", the photographs prevented it. "They're pretty terrible", he said. "There are so many kids just laying there; these pictures are authentic".<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/27/us/kissinger-tapes-describe-crises-war-and-stark-photos-of-abuse.html|title=Kissinger Tapes Describe Crises, War and Stark Photos of Abuse|last=Becker|first=Elizabeth|date=2004-05-27|work=The New York Times|access-date=2019-10-16|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331|quote=In their conversation on Nov. 21, 1969, about the My Lai massacre, Mr. Laird told Mr. Kissinger that while he would like 'to sweep it under the rug,' the photographs prevented it. 'There are so many kids just laying there; these pictures are authentic,' Mr. Laird said.}}</ref> Within the Army, the reaction was similar. Chief Warrant Officer André Feher, with the [[United States Army Criminal Investigation Division|U.S. Army's Criminal Investigation Division]] (CID), was assigned the case in early August 1969. After he interviewed Haeberle, and was shown the photographs which he described as "evidence that something real bad had happened", he and the Pentagon officials he reported to realized "that news of the massacre could not be contained".<ref>{{harvnb|Oliver|2006|pp=36,39}} "Feher himself recalled that he did not obtain 'hard evidence that something real bad had happened' until he interviewed Ronald Haeberle on 25 August and was shown Haeberle's photographs of the massacre victims.&nbsp;... the interview indicated to Pentagon officials that news of the massacre could not be contained."</ref>

The story threatened to undermine the U.S. war effort and severely damage the Nixon presidency. Inside the White House, officials privately discussed how to contain the scandal. On November 21, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger emphasized that the White House needed to develop a "game plan", to establish a "press policy", and maintain a "unified line" in its public response. The White House established a "My Lai Task Force" whose mission was to "figure out how best to control the problem", to make sure administration officials "all don't go in different directions" when discussing the incident, and to "engage in dirty tricks". These included discrediting key witnesses and questioning Hersh's motives for releasing the story. What soon followed was a public relations offensive by the administration designed to shape how My Lai would be portrayed in the press and understood among the American public.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Rowling|first1=Charles|last2=Sheets|first2=Penelope|last3=Jones|first3=Timothy|date=2015|title=American Atrocity Revisited: National Identity, Cascading Frames, and the My Lai Massacre|journal=Political Communication|volume=32|issue=2|pages=311|doi=10.1080/10584609.2014.944323|s2cid=143846178}}</ref>

As members of Congress called for an inquiry and news correspondents abroad expressed their horror at the massacre, the [[General Counsel of the Army]] [[Robert E. Jordan III|Robert Jordan]] was tasked with speaking to the press. He refused to confirm allegations against Calley. Noting the significance that the statement was given at all, [[Bill Downs]] of [[ABC News (United States)|ABC News]] said it amounted to the first public expression of concern by a "high defense official" that American troops "might have committed genocide".{{sfn|Oliver|2006|p=48}}

On 24 November 1969, Lieutenant General [[William R. Peers]] was appointed by the [[Secretary of the Army]] and the [[Chief of Staff of the United States Army|Army Chief of Staff]] to conduct a thorough review of the My Lai incident, 16–19 March 1968, and its investigation by the Army.<ref>{{cite news |title=The Judgement of Peers |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1979/07/01/the-judgement-of-peers/a84c96dd-ffc4-4165-90d5-fbf6f02c6fc6/}}</ref> Peers's final report,<ref name="summaryreport"/> presented to higher-ups on 17 March 1970, was highly critical of top officers at brigade and divisional levels for participating in the cover-up, and the Charlie Company officers for their actions at Mỹ Lai.<ref>{{cite web|author=Linder, Douglas|url=http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/myl_bpeers.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19990427192242/http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/myl_bpeers.htm|url-status=dead|archive-date=27 April 1999|title=Biography of General William R. Peers|publisher=Law.umkc.edu|year=1999|access-date=18 June 2011}}</ref>

According to Peers' findings:

{{quote|
[The 1st Battalion] members had killed at least 175–200 Vietnamese men, women, and children. The evidence indicates that only 3 or 4 were confirmed as Viet Cong although there were undoubtedly several unarmed VC (men, women, and children) among them and many more active supporters and sympathizers. One man from the company was reported as wounded from the accidental discharge of his weapon. ... a tragedy of major proportions had occurred at Son My.<ref name=summaryreport/>}}

In 2003 Hugh Thompson, the pilot who had intervened during the massacre, said of the Peers report:

{{blockquote|The Army had Lieutenant General William R. Peers conduct the investigation. He conducted a very thorough investigation. Congress did not like his investigation at all, because he pulled no punches, and he recommended court-martial for I think 34 people, not necessarily for the murder but for the cover-up. Really the cover-up phase was probably as bad as the massacre itself, because he recommended court-martial for some very high-ranking individuals.<ref name=HThompson-2003>{{cite speech |title=Moral Courage In Combat: The My Lai Story |first=Hugh |last=Thompson |author-link=Hugh Thompson Jr. |event=William C. Stutt Ethics Lecture |location=Annapolis, MD |date=2003 |url=https://www.usna.edu/Ethics/publications/ThompsonPg1-28_Final.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070221172507/https://www.usna.edu/Ethics/publications/ThompsonPg1-28_Final.pdf |archive-date=21 February 2007 |access-date=March 7, 2022}}</ref>{{rp|28}}}}

In 1968, an American journalist, [[Jonathan Schell]], wrote that in the Vietnamese province of Quang Ngai, where the Mỹ Lai massacre occurred, up to 70% of all villages were destroyed by the air strikes and artillery bombardments, including the use of napalm; 40 percent of the population were refugees, and the overall civilian casualties were close to 50,000 a year.<ref>Schell, Jonathan. ''The Military Half: An Account of Destruction in Quang Ngai and Quang Tin''. New York: Knopf, 1968.<!-- ISSN/ISBN needed --></ref> Regarding the massacre at Mỹ Lai, he stated, "There can be no doubt that such an atrocity was possible only because a number of other methods of killing civilians and destroying their villages had come to be the rule, and not the exception, in our conduct of the war".<ref>''The New Yorker'', Volume 45, Issues 41–45, 1969, p. 27.<!-- ISSN/ISBN needed --></ref>

In May 1970, a sergeant who participated in [[Operation Speedy Express]] wrote a confidential letter to then Army Chief of Staff Westmoreland describing civilian killings he said were on the scale of the massacre occurring as "a My Lai each month for over a year" during 1968–69. Two other letters to this effect from enlisted soldiers to military leaders in 1971, all signed "Concerned Sergeant", were uncovered within declassified National Archive documents. The letters describe common occurrences of civilian killings during population pacification operations. Army policy also stressed very high body counts and this resulted in dead civilians being marked down as combatants. Alluding to indiscriminate killings described as unavoidable, the commander of the 9th Infantry Division, then Major General [[Julian Ewell]], in September 1969, submitted a confidential report to Westmoreland and other generals describing the countryside in some areas of Vietnam as resembling the [[Battle of Verdun|battlefields of Verdun]].<ref name="Turse">{{cite magazine|last=Turse|first=Nick|author-link=Nick Turse|title=A My Lai a Month|magazine=The Nation|year=2008|url=http://www.thenation.com/article/my-lai-month}}</ref><ref name="Nelson">{{cite book|last=Nelson|first=Deborah|title=The War Behind Me: Vietnam Veterans Confront the Truth about U.S. War Crimes|publisher=Basic Books|date=2008|location=New York|isbn=978-0-465-00527-7|url=https://archive.org/details/warbehindmevietn00nels_0}}</ref>

In July 1969, the [[United States Army Provost Marshal General|Office of Provost Marshal General of the Army]] began to examine the evidence regarding possible criminal charges. Eventually, Calley was charged with several counts of premeditated murder in September 1969, and 25 other officers and enlisted men were later charged with related crimes.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/calley-charged-for-my-lai-massacre|title=Lt. William Calley charged for My Lai massacre|date=5 September 1969|publisher=History|access-date=19 January 2020}}</ref>

In April 1972, Congressman [[Les Aspin]] sued the [[Department of Defense]] in District Court to reveal the Peers Commission. <ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.nytimes.com/1972/04/04/archives/pentagon-is-sued-on-mylai-report-rep-aspin-seeks-release-of-peers.html | title=Pentagon is Sued on Mylai Report | work=The New York Times | date=4 April 1972 }}</ref> Following the massacre a [[The Pentagon|Pentagon]] task force called the [[Vietnam War Crimes Working Group]] (VWCWG) investigated alleged atrocities which were committed against South Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops and created a secret archive of some 9,000 pages which documents 320 alleged incidents from 1967 to 1971 including 7 massacres in which at least 137 civilians died; 78 additional attacks targeting noncombatants in which at least 57 were killed, 56 were wounded and 15 were sexually assaulted; and 141 incidents of U.S. soldiers torturing civilian detainees or prisoners of war. 203 U.S. personnel were charged with crimes, 57 of them were court-martialed and 23 of them were convicted. The VWCWG also investigated over 500 additional alleged atrocities but it could not verify them.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-vietnam6aug06-story.html|title=Civilian Killings Went Unpunished|work=Los Angeles Times|first1=Nick|last1=Turse|first2=Deborah|last2=Nelson|date=6 August 2006|access-date=28 October 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.latimes.com/la-na-vietnam20aug20-sg-storygallery.html|title=Vietnam, The War Crimes Files|work=Los Angeles Times|first=Deborah|last=Nelson|date=14 August 2006|access-date=1 November 2019}}</ref>