Abstract

The Other My Lai

The author asks why the U.S. media paid little attention to documents detailing previously unreported atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War. In July 2002 a retired US Army colonel Who would be dead within months unburdened himself of twenty-two classified documents concerning war crimes in Vietnam. The colonel didn't care for journalists, but he was fond of his neighbor in Springfield, Virginia, a Washington-based science reporter for the Toledo Blade. Those twenty-two documents laid the groundwork for a remarkable four-part series published in the Blade this past October--a series that meticulously reconstructed the activities of an elite US Army reconnaissance platoon and its descent into barbarism at the height of the Vietnam War. Enraged by prolonged exposure to sniper fire, booby traps and high casualties, Tiger Force unleashed a reign of terror that left possibly hundreds of civilians dead. Despite its explosive findings, the Blade series--which was assembled from candid interviews with Tiger Force veterans and Vietnamese civilians, along with documents from the National Archives--was not a front-page story in leading American newspapers, most of which printed truncated summaries published by the Associated Press and Scripps Howard. It says much about the timidity of our press that newspapers in Bangor and Austin--and not the New York Times, Washington Post or Los Angeles Times--had to take the lead in demanding further investigation into the behavior of soldiers who, by their own admission, committed horrific atrocities in Vietnam.