Seymour Hersh My Lai Interview

Steve Buchester: Sy, in your book you quote a member of Charlie Company named Herbert Carter as saying, the people didn't know what they were dying for, and the guys didn't know why they were shooting them. I get the feeling that, that in that lies the— a great deal of the importance of the work that you've done on My Lai, that it was an event that took place with Not that much reasoning going into it while it was happening. Some guys momentarily thinking about what they were doing, but it was a happening in war.

Seymour Hersh: Well, you know, first of all, the quote from Carter closes the book. So obviously, I think it's a pretty important quote. Simply, what happened at My Lai, of course, in my personal opinion, was not an isolated incident. And I don't think very many people who seriously studied the war agree— would disagree with that. In effect, perhaps we killed 450 or 500 people there. Perhaps we haven't killed that many in one specific instance before, but it's happened. What we've done with My Lai 4 and what the Army has done, in a way, by charging this Lieutenant Calley— it was the fact that this lieutenant was charged that enabled the papers to initially publish the stories that I was writing last year. What we've finally, I think, done is surface the— you know, you might say that the The cancerous fingernail of what's going on in Vietnam. And the whole public can take a look. And really, in this book, I put something like 20 pages of footnotes in it, almost to document every specific quote, only to increase the sense of credibility. So there it is. There's the thumb sticking up. This is what we do in Vietnam. This is— frankly, I'd like to say it— It's a crime. It should have surprised me more, but it didn't. And the fact that one could write so— you know, the kids aren't important, in the sense— I'm talking about the Herb Carters and the others in the company. I think maybe, oh, 50 or so are now being looked at pretty hard by the Army for mass murder. But I, in a way, I don't think they're at fault. Certainly, a 19-year-old kid— in Herb Carter's case, he was a pimp at the age of 14.

Steve Buchester: Right.

Seymour Hersh: A black kid on the streets of San Francisco, a very foxy guy. He got into the Army under a program called Project 100,000, in which McNamara lowered the intellectual— I guess, if that's the word— the education levels, or the reading levels, for the armed services, in an effort that clearly seems now aimed to getting nice, not too smart black kids into the Army, not too well-educated black kids into the Army, and cannon fodder is the word Adam Clayton Powell used. So here's a kid like Herb Carter. He gets there, and he's He's exposed to a very sort of gradual, not too gradual perhaps, brutalization process. And to me— and the next thing you know, he's close to a killer. I don't think— I think what makes Herb Carter outstanding is, one, that he had some sense of what happened. He told me at another point, when I was asking about whether there was serious racial friction in his company, Charlie Company, he said, oh, man, no, he said. In fact, they ought to take some pictures of us.

Steve Buchester: Right.

Seymour Hersh: Referring to the photographs of the massacre, and say, hey, these guys got along good. At least they killed together. And it was this ability to see things, I think, pretty clearly. But yet, he was a pretty violent guy himself. And I think what I'm getting at is that, what the hell, if they want to charge Herb Cotter with murder, I think perhaps they better start charging everybody in Vietnam with murder, too. Right.

Steve Buchester: In the book, you talk about how these guys essentially accepted, when there was the brief investigation after March 16th of '68, that the men were asked what happened there. Some of them were. But they looked to the senior officers, who essentially said nothing happened there.

Seymour Hersh: Right.

Steve Buchester: And so they let it go, and nobody ever pursued it, even though some of these guys were ashamed. If it hadn't been for Ron Ridenour, who wasn't even there at the time, tracking this down, flying over it, writing letters to congressmen, half of which never got logged in the congressmen's records, this probably would still not have come to Army attention. It seems to me that that's a point that follows up what we've just been talking about, That they accepted, even though some of them were ashamed about what went on there, that they just accepted that these were the rules, that this wasn't something you talked about, this wasn't something you complained about, this wasn't something you wrote letters to congressmen about. A few of them were warned, don't do it. But that none of them pursued it, even though some of them were very ashamed of what they'd done in retrospect.

Seymour Hersh: I think in all fairness to Ron Ridenour, if he'd been in the unit, he probably wouldn't have pursued it either. It took somebody from the outside to write about it. Well, for one thing, these guys get beat into them right away, the chain of command. And I think we really have to look higher when we consider guilt here. For another thing, you have to ask yourself the very basic question. Here's the killing of 400 or 500 people, witnessed by perhaps a dozen helicopters who were assigned that day for combat support, maybe 3 or 4 men in each helicopter, 60 men perhaps there. Right. The major general in charge of the Americal Division was overland— over in the air that day. The colonel in charge of the brigade, the 11th Brigade, in which Charlie Company was a unit, was there. The head of the task force to which Charlie Company was attached was there. There were artillery officers. There were other, you know, observers. Charlie Company— the task force had 3 companies. After Charlie Company did its killing, most of the men talked among each other, and they talked to other members of the—

Steve Buchester: Task force.

Seymour Hersh: Companies in the task force. Perhaps within a few days, 300 or 400 men, GIs, knew about it. Many of the kids I talked to told me, with some sense of shame, that they would be razzed by other people in the brigade. The 11th Brigade has a number of regiments in it. It's many thousand people. They would meet other people in the brigade, and they'd say, oh, yeah, we know about you guys killing all those VCs. Nothing but women and kids. And they'd all laugh. So perhaps— Indirectly or directly, 500, 600 men knew about it from somebody in the company. Ron Reitnauer had no trouble in Vietnam learning all about it from people in the company who talked readily. So what do you have when you've got a situation in which— I should add also that one of the officers in the 11th Brigade was an audiophile, a tape nut, and he recorded all of the radio transmissions that morning, beginning promptly at 7:22 with Lieutenant Calley taking off in the first helicopter.

Steve Buchester: Right.

Seymour Hersh: The tape ran all day. I write about it a little bit in my book. And then he proceeded to tell— to play the tape for other officers in the unit. And they would gather around, most of them officers who I talked to, who knew— admitted knowing about the tape, admitted they had heard it, which leads one to think that it was pretty widespread. So perhaps you had most of the officer corps, certainly the generals, the 2 generals, the 1-star and the 2-star general— I'm talking about Major General Coster— all knew about it. And yet nobody said anything. Nobody reported it. Right. A lot of Vietnamese knew about it. The Vietnamese Army knew about it. The survivors knew about it. So you begin, you know, you either make— there's only 2 things, I think, to conclude from this. One is, of course, that it was such a shockingly untoward event that nobody could even begin to discuss it. Or the other one, I think the more logical conclusion, is, well, that's just another day in Vietnam. Maybe it was a little messier, and maybe we have to work a little harder to keep it out of the newspapers, if that's what we're interested in. Or work a little harder to keep the men from talking about it, but that's the way it goes. I think that's the inevitable conclusion. To me, that's the most important part of my book. Certainly not that the graphic— I do happen to have a very graphic— I talked to, I think, something like 53 kids, about 35 of them at length. Others weren't so cooperative. But I got something from over 50 kids. And so I have a very graphic description of the day. But more importantly, I think, is the cover-up, just the sort of What's the word for it? Illness, malaise, I don't know. The atmosphere in which these sort of crimes can go unreported. And I personally am convinced I wasn't the first reporter to be leaking information about this. And for a long time, I thought I would go around and modestly say, oh, I'm sure a dozen reporters in this town could have gotten it or could have gotten this story. And I'm beginning to think not anymore. I'm beginning to think it takes—

Steve Buchester: A lot of courage.

Seymour Hersh: As you know, we sold this through something called Dispatch News Service, which, as one Washington paper said, is a play-it-by-ear news agency in town. I think it takes sort of a non-establishment approach. I don't think I could have gotten this through the desk at The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal. I just don't think I could have gotten it through the desk, because the Pentagon probably would have denied it and the paper wouldn't have published it. And we went ahead in the face of denials and published it, on the simple gut feeling that it was true.

Steve Buchester: I think it's important to note that the Pentagon So, I don't know.

Seymour Hersh: You know, it seems to me a pretty serious problem that a tragedy of this kind can be kept from the American public. By April of 1969, a year after the incident, there were a number of officers in the Pentagon who knew about it. The word was it was a major flap. This I didn't learn until I began my work in— this year, late last year and early this year. And yet, this kind of stuff was kept away from the American public. That really worries me.

Steve Buchester: Right.

Seymour Hersh: Um, uh, does it worry me as much as the actual killing? No. I mean, that's, uh, that's a real, a real sore that we have. And, uh, I can't emphasize this point too much. I really hope somehow that the word gets out that, that this did happen, it was true. Your audience, of course, is more sophisticated, but I mentioned in my book somewhere that a poll taken a few months after the incident in Minneapolis, which isn't, you know, a totally illiberal city, More than 50% of the people interviewed said they didn't believe it happened.

Steve Buchester: I mean, your first chapter is called You Wouldn't Believe It, which is a line from one of Jonathan Schell's books. You point out in your book that there was an AP story that moved a few days after your first My Lai stories were published, which was a story about an incident that took place in 1965. And after your stories Broke on My Lai, this guy felt compelled, either compelled to write about it or felt free to write about it, and wrote in 1969 about something that he had witnessed in 1965, perhaps that he thought no one would believe. And I also recall the publication of a book called In the Name of America, which is simply newspaper stories. I mean, stories that have been published in regular daily papers, not, you know, not left-wing newspapers or left-wing magazines or underground papers or left-wing radio stations or anything like, you know. Left-wing radio stations. But, you know, but this is actually UPI and AP reports, which are perhaps the most conservative of regular journalistic reporting out of Vietnam that most people would see. As you've gone through this, do you get the feeling that that's why a lot of this stuff just hasn't come out? Things like the Minneapolis poll, that people just— people don't want to believe it?

Seymour Hersh: Well, it's—

Steve Buchester: The congressmen's offices who got letters from Ron Ridenour don't have any record of them.

Seymour Hersh: You know, it's appalling, but, you know, why in the hell didn't this get out? That, to me, is the great question, really the great question of my book anyway. What just did happen? Why do we have this silence? And I don't know. I know that many congressmen have received many letters like Ron Reidenauer's. I know that for a few weeks after the My Lai incident, there were a regular series of stories about other tragedies. I think that's a good point. None of which have been followed up by the press, which is a very fascinating fact. None of which— I think one— again, I think for the press, in its defense, one easy thing, one easy point here is that the Army itself has charged Calley. That's a tremendous difference. But I'm sure there's been similar chargings after a massacre. And the Army, by the way, I really get a positive feeling about exposing this stuff. If anybody— you know, everybody talks about pretrial publicity. But in fact, I think we sort of saved some lives in Vietnam.

Steve Buchester: Right.

Seymour Hersh: The Army, the Marine Corps, if you remember those 5 men who were, or whatever the number was, who were charged with murdering 16 Vietnamese peasants, civilians. So that wouldn't have happened, I don't think, without My Lai. And I think the word now is out to the troops that, you know, you better watch it a little bit because you're liable to get reported. So we've probably saved some lives, which to me more than justifies any question about pretrial publicity, which has been waved in my face constantly since I began writing about this. But why? I don't know. I know one problem is that— a question of credibility, I guess. Just— it's just— to me, it's the most fantastic— it makes it a wonderful story. And the story isn't over. I mean, you really want to know what happened to the report, what the generals did with it. Did General Coster talk to Willie Westmoreland in Saigon, like many people think he must have?

Steve Buchester: Yes.

Seymour Hersh: 2-star generals with great ambitions, and he was a ringknocker from West Point. A 2-star general like that isn't going to lay it on the line, his whole career, for a captain named Medina. You know, by the way, one of my favorite stories about all of this is, a few weeks after the first stories broke last fall, I was invited to appear before a group of congressional aides and interns, government interns, at one of the chambers in the House side of Congress. Right.

Steve Buchester: Postal—

Seymour Hersh: post office office, one of the committee rooms. And there were about 100 people there. Some of them were interns at the CIA and interns at the Defense Department. And they asked me a little bit about My Lai, and I was talking about racism, about what I think is— I don't think anybody, again, would doubt that there, you know, the charge was wonderful, charging Calley with killing 109, quote, Oriental human beings, I guess as opposed to pigs or something, you know, or water buffalo. Yeah. It's hard to fathom the kind of mind that does that. And by the way, after the first initial outcry over this particular wording, the Army sent a memo out to its future— to all of its commands saying, in future charges in connection with this case, let's just say Vietnamese nationals. No more Oriental human beings. But anyway, I was talking about racism, and one of the young guys who I later found out was an intern at the Defense Department raised his hand and interjected sort of very angrily. He said, you mean to say— he said, where do you get off talking about that? He said, just because one spit captain goes nuts with his company. You know, how can you go around condemning the whole Army for being racist? Right. And things like that, you know. So we've got a long way to go, not only in the question of racism, but the question of murder, which to me is the most overwhelming question in the United States right now. Whether we can solve these other questions or not remains to be seen. I think not, perhaps. But nevertheless, we haven't exactly gone into the stage of open murder yet. And we are in a stage of open murder in Vietnam. And I really wish that all these environment freaks and stuff like that would remember the murder and remember My Lai, because as bad as My Lai is, it's clear that there have been many more. It's clear it's very easy for them to be covered up. And it's clear we've got a tremendous problem, because the media simply isn't going to buy off on it. I've gotten some wonderful letters from people in the service still. I'm sorry. Very explicit in detail on a number of other incidents. And maybe, as I say, maybe you haven't had a My Lai, but we— I know of one colonel who operated in the Mekong Delta, which is full of civilians. He operated for, I think, 122 straight days, taking an awf— reporting an awful lot high body count. And in those 122 straight days of action, he reported not one captured enemy soldier, which means he possibly killed, you know, was killing a couple dozen people a day.

John Stennis: Yeah.

Steve Buchester: You wouldn't believe it— excuse me— you wouldn't believe it also seems to apply even to My Lai, when— even when the Army had decided, because of Eisenhower's letters and congressional pressure from Congressman Udall and several others, to charge Calley, when they— when the first AP dispatch moved Out of Georgia, and you report in your book that Secretary Laird had appointed someone to monitor the wires to see what was going to happen, and the dispatch moved. A paper down in Georgia, a local paper, printed a story. I believe one other paper printed a— Miami Herald, I think it was, printed one story about Calley's background when he'd been a railroad switchman during a strike. And that was it. And then the New York Times carried the AP dispatch buried way back on page 30-something or under a couple inches.

Seymour Hersh: Right.

Steve Buchester: And MeLai would have gone away if— and then, you know, and you even missed it, that thing. And had it not been for a call, you probably wouldn't have pursued it.

Seymour Hersh: Never. If it hadn't been— I was tipped. That story is sort of interesting in a way. Because I'm not what you call an objective journalist. I don't understand all this concern for objective journalism. I guess the great example would be to talk or do a story about cancer, cigarette smoking being harmful to your health. I remember when I worked for the AP, we always used to have— we'd write a story about some new scientific finding, and we'd always have to be objective. And objective journalism called for around paragraph 3 to insert the following paragraph.

John Stennis: Right.

Seymour Hersh: However, a spokesman for the National Tobacco Institute insisted that cigarette smoking causes no harmful effects and there's been no direct link. Well, that's a lie. Subjective journalism consists of writing a number of lies in a story. That always bothered me. I think the guy who first really— I remember when I first got to town, James Ridgeway of The Republic was anything but an objective journalist. This is the old days, and he and Andy Kopkind were writing very good stuff. For that now raggy magazine. And Ridgway once explained to me that, you know, hey, look, if they want to be objective, let them write a letter to the editor. He said they can always tell their side that way. I remember that vividly. He was way ahead. And I think they were beginning to catch on that objective journalism— well, anyway, the point is that, of course, we all missed the story. Of course, the Army wanted it that way. And of course, the Army later was very excruciated about all the complaints about it from the media. Their first announcement, I think, was issued September 6th, the day after Calley was And it said something to the effect that they're holding a GI and somewhere in connection with murder, and a number of murders, or perhaps some murders, or just murder. No, you know, obviously 109 would be a pretty sexy story, but nowhere was that figure mentioned, although there's no law that says you don't— you can't. There's no— you know, it's been done before. It was just simply a very discretionary move on their part. And I guess that's the nature of the game. They're not about to do anything that's going to hurt themselves.

Steve Buchester: So it's up to the press to do something about it.

Seymour Hersh: So it didn't. I got the tip from somebody in Washington, and I believed it, I think instinctively. He said that they were holding an officer— he didn't know the name of the officer— in Fort Benning, Georgia, and accusing him of 75 deaths. And I think the reason why I believed it was, as you know, I've been messing around, or I had been, with chemical and biological warfare.

Steve Buchester: Right.

Seymour Hersh: And, um, oh, writing— I did a book 2 years ago in which I was writing about shipping stuff around the country, testing biological agents in the open air, all the stuff that's beginning sort of to filter down to the consciousness a little bit. It's making it almost a liberal issue now. And, uh, and so, you know, somebody who's like me, who's aware that the Army is capable of shipping nerve gas around the country without people knowing about it, is also aware that they're possible— very possible they can court-martial somebody So I did the usual thing. I write about it a little bit in the book. I and my editor, Bob Loomis of Random House, who did a marvelous job in guiding me along this, we had long debates about how much should we write about myself. Here's this sort of cool objective book written in the third person, and all of a sudden I'm going to jump in with, I did this, I did that. But anyway, so we didn't write much about it. But it is sort of interesting. Oh, 2 or 3 or 4 awful days in Washington on the telephone calling all over the country trying to get everybody, anybody I knew whom had any inside information. And eventually, lo and behold, I found Khaled's name, largely because somebody said, look at the New York Times on page 38. You know, of course, it had been printed. And I found his name. And from there, it was a little bit easier. It took me a number of calls more to find his lawyer. Right. And then I did the smart thing, I think. I didn't bother with the telephone anymore. I just ran out and caught a plane out to Salt Lake City, where his lawyer had his office, and got stuff there, came back, got stuff from Congress. The hawks— this is the kind of issue in which the hawks even blanch. You know, it's somehow— it's really un-American to murder people in cold blood. As somebody in the Pentagon, one officer in the Pentagon who talked to me about it, I said, were they Viet Cong or something? That was the way it had been described to me. And he sort of hit himself with his— the edge of his hand around the knee. And he said, sigh, are people that high? They're not Viet Cong, are they? And so this is the kind of issue that really was a gut issue for a lot of people. And a lot of people who are hawks couldn't buy it. But anyway, then after talking to his lawyer and people in town, I then went looking for Callie. Hi. And I just flew down to— they have a direct flight, Southern Airways, which, by the way, also is linked with a number of CIA operations in Southeast Asia, so don't buy the stock. Southern Airways has a direct flight from Dulles to Columbus, Georgia. I guess that's it, or Columbia, Georgia, or South Carolina, whatever. Columbus, Georgia, where Benning is located. Mm-hmm. And I went down there and looked for Calley. And after sort of another awful 12 hours of pounding on doors, etc., he wasn't listed anywhere, though the Army insisted after I first wrote I wrote the story that he was available to anybody. Anyway, I found Kelley, and we talked for 5 hours. Scared kid, dumb, not— he wasn't terribly honest with me, but he told me enough. He told me about the numbers, told me how many people he was charged with, defended his actions, said they were Viet Cong, etc., said he was under orders. You know, he made the usual self-serving case. But nonetheless, he gave me enough so that I can go back and write. Right. And I did. And from there, even more interesting to me than the actual breaking of the story is the fact that after I wrote the first story, which was Dave Obst, who runs Dispatch News Service, somehow managed to get 35 papers to run, none in New York. The New York Times got a hold of one of our stories apparently and had been working a little bit on its own and put the two together to write a piece under its own byline. And But anyway, the story was out. It was all over major newspapers, big banner headlines, this guy charged with 109 murders. And there it sat for 3 or 4 days. Nobody did anything. I thought my job was over, but it wasn't. You know, the damn people, reporters, just didn't go after it. They let it sit there. You know, there must have been witnesses. And then Reidenauer surfaced. He called a newspaperman or something, and somehow a newspaper just— oh, it's a long, complicated story, but somehow the story of his role broke out. And I went to see him 3 days after I first read about him, only because the night before, 2 days later, I had asked him if anybody I came to see him. I just happened to call him at his place in Claremont College. He said no. He talked to a couple of reporters over the phone. So I flew out, and I was sort of manna from heaven. You know, he'd been living with this awful story for— well, I saw him in November— since a year earlier. He first heard about it— actually, a year and a half earlier, about it, right after the incident. And right now or then, let me Xerox every bit of information he had, including names and phone numbers of people in the company who talked to him. I remember. It was one of those super trips. I landed there in Califor— I left here At noon on a Monday, got to— got to riding hour, oh, about 5:00, caught about a 6:30 or 7:00 plane at LA Airport to Salt Lake City, where I interviewed a kid named Mike Terry, one of the people in the company. And I got— I had to drive a couple of miles over icy roads in the middle of Utah, some mountains out there, to a town called Orem, O-R-E-M, a Mormon town. I remember knocking on this kid's door, the first witness. And he said, who are you? And about 1 o'clock in the morning, and they let me in, and I hadn't called. I just went out there cold. You know, who knows? He could have been on a date or, you know, who knows, in college somewhere. But he was there sleeping, and one of his little brothers got me. And when I sat down, told him who I was, what I wanted, showed him a couple of newspaper stories— he hadn't seen them; he'd heard a little bit about it on the radio— and then he said, do you want me to tell you the same thing I told the Army? And I said, sure, kid. And from there we went. He was— as a matter of fact, his interview held up. Uh, all, all the way. But from there I went to— early that morning I caught a plane to the West Coast, to Seattle, saw somebody there, caught a plane and flew all the way across country to see a guy named Mike— Michael Bernhardt, who everybody in your audience should know about a little bit. Got a story from him and ran back to Washington and put out a second story a week later on the eyewitnesses. And it still lagged. All the papers ran that. The New York Times managed to find Michael Bernhardt. Um, our story broke in London and they had enough time, so we were pushing the Times around too, which is a very important paper.

Steve Buchester: Uh-huh.

Seymour Hersh: And they were doing a pretty good job on it. Most of the other papers were simply content to run our stories but weren't doing anything themselves. And then G.I., sensing some money in the company, began to start going in, and the story began to build up. And then I kept— I was still hustling around, and I found Paul Meadlow, and we put him on television and then in the newspapers, and that broke it open. But it really took— I really had to keep on, you know, I think I wrote 5 stories in total before I finally quit and started writing a book. Right. And I quit writing for newspapers when I realized that was nowhere. By December, I was still writing for newspapers, and papers began to stop playing it. They'd had enough of it. And we're finding an interesting response. We're syndicating my book. Most of your readers or listeners probably know some of it, much of it appeared in Harper's Magazine in the May issue. And we're syndicating it to newspapers. We're trying to get as much exposure as possible. And a lot of papers are buying it, but a lot aren't. A lot say, gee, I can't I don't want to inflict any more of this on my readers. We've just had enough. So, all of— you know, you begin to really get— I don't know what I'm saying. What I'm saying, in essence, is that there's a lot of brainwashing around, going around. You know, a lot of people making decisions about what people should hear or listen to. And somehow, somebody's got to do something to break that.

Steve Buchester: Thank you. When these stories first broke, there were Senate and House Armed Services Committee briefings. And I recall Senator Stennis coming out, not known as a dove, and saying something to the effect of, Americans don't do this kind of thing. And there was a fairly strong response, at least initially, from the Senate Armed Services Committee. There's a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee Now holding closed-door hearings on My Lai. And I wonder what you've heard about that. I get the sense from reports that they almost seem to be more interested in why this came out than in what happened.

Seymour Hersh: Well, actually, I've heard a lot about it. And this is another one of those wonderful travesties. It's being conducted by Congressman Hebert of Louisiana, and it's awful. What he's doing is he's getting everybody who had something to do with exposing it and persecuting them. The one man who comes out good in the Army was an officer named Thompson, who was flying a helicopter over at that That day, and he's being badgered around. The photographer who sold his pictures is being badgered around for violating regulations. They want to charge him. And they're not at all concerned with My Lai Four. So Congress isn't the answer. I don't— the Peers Panel maybe did an effective job in indicting all of the officers, the generals, etc., but certainly none of that has gotten— what really happened hasn't come to the public. My book's helping, but somehow we need another committee. I wish one of the Senate, maybe the Foreign— Sir, I'm— The Foreign Relations Committee. Or maybe Senator Kennedy's Refugee Subcommittee. We need hearings on that from— we need more, more information about why it was held up, why it wasn't uncovered, because I've only begun to scratch at the surface.

Steve Buchester: The Army calls it My Lai 4, a part of a cluster known as Song My, in an area the Army calls Pinkville. 3 weeks ago, few Americans had ever heard of My Lai 4. This program is being recorded Monday, December 1st, 1969. And today there appears on the COVID of the nation's 2 major news magazines the photograph of Lieutenant William L. Calley Jr., a 26-year-old college dropout from Miami who is accused of responsibility for the death of 109 of the inhabitants of My Lai 4. This is Steve Buchester in Washington, and this is another in the Pacifica Radio series Military Monitor. The White House said last Wednesday that what went on at My Lai 4 on March 16th, 1968, is, quote, abhorrent to the The conscience of all the American people. Senators and various government officials are reported as being shocked, horrified, appalled. Somehow, members of C Company of the 11th Infantry Brigade of the Americal Division had, it has now become clear, killed between 100 and 500 civilians— old men, women, and children. The reports evidently never got beyond the division. On Saturday morning, September 6th, 1969, the Associated Press moved a brief story from Fort Benning, Georgia, stating that charges had been brought against Lieutenant Calley for the murder of civilians in Vietnam. The Associated Press received no inquiries on the story and did not itself follow it up. The New York Times routinely printed the story as a brief. Late in October, Seymour Hersh, freelance reporter who covered the Pentagon for the Associated Press, Author of the book on chemical and biological warfare, which started the CBW controversy, received a tip on the case. He broke the story November 13th through the newly organized Dispatch News Service. The New York Times, alerted to the Hersh story, printed its own rather less detailed version. Hersh kept after the story, breaking interviews with men who were there, an interview with a man from Indiana named Paul Medlow who says he helped kill the villagers. More stories on the Pinkville case can be expected from Hersh. And a 23-year-old veteran named Ronald Ridenour, now a student at Claremont Men's College in California, checked out the story, sent letters to the Pentagon, which did not pay much attention, and letters to the House Armed Services Committee and several congressmen, who did pay attention. On April 7th of this year, the Armed Services Committee asked for an investigation. Yes! On September 5th, Lieutenant Calley was charged. On November 13th, Seymour Hersh's story broke. And then there were the pictures taken by an Army combat photographer who was there, published in color in the current issue of Life magazine. Today we talked with Seymour Hersh about the massacre at My Lai IV, not more of the specific details of the horror, but about some of the deeper questions involved. Sy, you've interviewed almost at least a half dozen of the members of this platoon that was involved in the Pinkville episode. How does something like this happen? What impressions do you get of these people and how an event like this could take place? Because the sense I get is that these are regular GIs, and somehow a whole series of forces conspired to make an event like this occur.

Seymour Hersh: Well, it's interesting. Actually, I've talked to more than a dozen by now, um, despite the recent ban on talking to such people that the, uh, the trial judge at Fort Benning, the trial judge in the Kelly case, uh, put forward. Uh, the boys don't seem to be very interested in it, and they still talk. And my feeling is, uh, first of all, there's the obvious point, and that's that I hope the Army doesn't think for one moment that it can simply try and hang or sentence a half dozen men or 6 men or, or a dozen men to To long terms in the stockade and think it solved the Pinkville question. Obviously, what's happened is it goes beyond just what these specific men did. And as such, everybody sort of has to ask themselves the question, what would we have done if we had been 19 and frightened and had fellows blown up by booby mines, etc.? What would happen to us if we'd been at Pinkville?

John Stennis: I think that's a very good question.

Seymour Hersh: And would we have fired? And it's easy to say yes, but it's really what Mrs. Paul Medlow said— Mrs. Medlow, rather, Paul Medlow's mother said. She said, I gave them a good boy, and they sent me back a murderer. So the obvious thing is that Pinkfield goes much deeper. It goes into not only the brutalization of the 300,000 or 400,000— 500,000. American boys who've been over there. And of course, look what we've done to that society in Vietnam, but also to the brutalization of America as a whole. And these are the real questions that we have to ask about the war. My favorite thing really now, this week's, or I guess this morning's favorite story about Pinkville, is the thought about the Army indictment in Lieutenant Calley's case, which, as you know, was made officially Yes. Formal last— announced last week. And the indictment accuses him in 6 different counts of killing with a rifle— oh, in one count it says 70 Oriental human beings, as distinct, I assume, distinct, I assume, from water buffalo or pigs. I'm not sure what the phrase Oriental human beings, except it does show that even in the Pentagon, this sort of fantastic racism Um, and implicit, if you will, that exists towards the Vietnamese people, which is— becomes, you know, these boys didn't invent this dislike for the Vietnamese people. It stems from the officers tend to speak in pejorative tones about them, etc. Another important thing about Pinkville that I— and I'm guessing now, and I haven't written this, and I haven't really put together all the interviews I made, And I haven't really sat down and looked at them and thought about it. But I think we'll all be wasting our time. That is, journalists, if we look for an order for a general— initially, I thought maybe we'd find something like that. Some general at one point said, let's get rid of it. I don't think we'll find it. I don't think we'll find it even for an order from a colonel. I think what we'll find is that we've had in Vietnam— Jonathan Schell, in his book, The Military Half, Which was published a couple years ago in The New Yorker initially, talking about the Quang Ngai province and some of the destruction that went on. What we've done is we've been sort of implicitly murdering people there for years, and now Pinkville somehow has drawn it all together. Somehow it's all the actions that have been at random have somehow come together in one explicit act that seems to bring home, really, to Americans what we've been doing there. I'm sort of amazed that all the press— I was just up looking at some of the wires. Here in the press building. And the newspapers all over the country are finally beginning to really get on the editorial side of things. For a long time, the newspapers would run the stories put out by me and others and not comment editorially on it. And now they're really beginning to, in pretty sharp terms, to denounce Pinkville and what it means to America.

Steve Buchester: When you talk to these guys specifically, though, as you said, you've talked to almost A dozen. And they'd been in firefights, and they'd had their buddies killed. But yet, except for this report we get of the helicopter pilot who came in and tried to stop it, nobody shouted, no, you can't do this. People said they walked off. People said they looked a different way. People said, I shot one or two to put them out of their misery. But nobody said stop. And how do they explain this to you? That they would be disobeying orders? Or how did— now they're horrified by what they did, but then they did it. And how do they explain what they did?

Seymour Hersh: Well, I think they were horrified right afterwards, some of the boys. And there's a lot of things. First of all, I think I ought to comment on one thing, this story leaked by the Pentagon over the weekend about this helicopter pilot who landed and rescued 16 people. I can't prove it as yet, but I know I will be able to prove that This may have happened all right on that day, but it certainly had not much to do with the massacre at Pinkville. And then let's assume it did and carry what the Pentagon said a little farther. We actually gave somebody a medal for landing a helicopter and rescuing 16 Vietnamese children from the American Army. I think when we start thinking about that, it becomes a little bit of a mind-blower, too. As for the individuals, Well, it's a sad commentary in the military that one just doesn't— the job of the military is, particularly in a line company, these were combat guys, they were grunts. The job of them isn't to think for themselves. It's to let the officers think. Some of them managed to avoid doing it. I've written about that, that you'll probably be reading about, a story about one boy who managed to avoid doing it. I think also we can comment sort of amazingly on this The story, as you know, this week's Life magazine is running a series of pictures on the incident taken by a fellow from Cleveland named Haberle. I think that's the way he pronounces it. And it's sort of a fantastic story. Haberle was the combat photographer for the assignment, took these pictures, got out of the Army, and for the last 6 months he's been going around giving speeches in Cleveland with— using these slides as a demonstration, I assume, of what's wrong with Vietnam. I hope that's what he's been doing.

Steve Buchester: Yes.

Seymour Hersh: And you wonder what makes somebody like that tick, in a way. He didn't come out forward until I'd broken the first story in Dispatch, that is. We'd put out the first piece. A week later, he came forward to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and he had an old buddy friend of his on the Plain Dealer, and the two of them set up shop in New York and tried selling the pictures for as much money as possible. You wonder why he didn't do something about it earlier. And you also wonder about his friend on the Cleveland Plain Dealer, his reporter friend who helped him sell it, but who must have known of the pictures before the incident. Why didn't he write about it? Right. So, I don't know why we want to particularly single out the boys, these kids, 19, 20. I don't know how acute they were. I don't know why we want to particularly single them out for anything. I think there's been a tremendous sort of lack of awareness and inability to communicate about what happened, not only to the boys, but to their officers and to the American press. I mean, I just can't believe that reporters in Vietnam did not hear about this. I think it's because they're afraid. And I can't— they'll say to you that, well, of course, it happens all the time. Well, I don't know. It seems to me it's a story. As for the kids themselves, they— it doesn't even occur to them that they should have talked. One of them told me very pointedly that the one officer who did land and complained was killed in action the next day. And as this fellow said to me, I got that hint pretty clearly. Now, whether or not— it's a very— nobody's suggesting that he was killed because he Nobody's suggesting necessarily that he was killed because of that, because he reported the accident there, the incident the day before. But at least in this boy's eyes, it was enough of a threat so that he had considered talking about it. He decided not to. That's why this kid out in California, Rod Reidenauer, becomes so important, because he really did something about it and he was gutsy.

Steve Buchester: Why do you think— now, we had, in fact, the Sunday London Times of 2 weeks ago went Through a whole series of things, from the CBS footage of several years ago of a village being burned out, through Jonathan Schell's books, Daniel Lyons' piece in The New Yorker, which got practically no pickup when it was published in The New Yorker, has now come out as a book, the Esquire magazine piece of a month ago, which got no pickup when it was printed, just was simply printed in Esquire. And now, over the weekend's papers, there was a report suddenly dredged up by some guy who had been in Vietnam, who's now in school in North Carolina.

John Stennis: Right.

Steve Buchester: Which he had first published in the January 1968 issue of Avant-Garde, and no one had paid attention to, about another incident. Why do you think that, outside of the fact that quite clearly, and as the press sections of the major news magazines showed, Dispatch was very enterprising in selling this, your first story, and the ones that have followed, but why do you think that now people are finally paying attention, where we've had I've had reports like this on and off for about— for at least 3 years, and with, to some degree, in a number of magazine pieces in very respectable magazines for at least 3 years.

Seymour Hersh: Oh, I don't know. I mean, you can ask that rhetorical question about what's wrong with the media in America. I, you know, Agnew isn't all wrong when he gets on their back, of course, for different reasons, I think. But still, oh, I think they're a little gutless. And basically, it took a— I tried to sell the piece, the story I had, with facts and evidence and pieces of paper, as we say in the trade, from the Pentagon to Look and Life, and was sort of— had the door slammed in my face. Look was very seriously interested, but they just at the last minute backed off. Somebody from a national news magazine told us the other day that they decided— they made a cover article on it this week, and they decided to hold off a few weeks because they didn't want to do anything that might be morally shaggy In terms of the story, I assume by that he meant that if they had written it earlier, they might have put him in a compromised position, compromising position. I just don't know. I mean, why why this stuff is coming? Why why this story had so much impact? I think is not only it's it's a very simple one, and I think the army here has decided to charge somebody. In the other cases, they haven't, and the newspapers have a ready handle. You know, the army charged Lieutenant So-and-so today with 109 murders and said quote. He did do this and that to these Oriental human beings. I can't help but be fascinated by that phrase. And so there you are, you know, that's why. There was a charge. 3 of the major papers that we gave this article to, the Washington Post, Newsday, and the Los Angeles Times, had a great deal of problems, did not believe he was charged, even though the story said he was charged. They said, well, he isn't charged. So we had a hassle with these guys, and eventually a couple of them, I don't know, they did some— they put out much different versions than I wrote on the first story. I think they're sort of sorry now. Maybe they're not. They should be. So, I don't know, Steve. I mean, that's a very, you know— hell, I mean, what we did is we took this story and we jammed it down the front page of 35 newspapers. Right. And after that, I mean, it was hard to ignore it. Ignore it. The Senate ignored it for a week. The editorial writers ignored it for a week. And then we found Bernhardt, and we found Terry out in Utah, and we found another boy. And they said, yes, I saw this. And then we found Paul Medlow saying, yes, I did it. And now this week we found another guy who says, no, I didn't do it, and here's why.

Steve Buchester: Last week there were the beginnings of congressional investigations before both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. For an explanation of congressional action before the story broke, and his current views, here are the comments of Senator John Stennis of Mississippi, the committee chairman, after hearing the testimony of Army Secretary Stanley Resor and seeing photographs, some of which appear in the new Life magazine.

John Stennis: I have— I have told the Army that the committee would certainly expect them to vigorously pursue this matter, for it is a matter of grave national security. A complete development of the facts. I also said for the committee that we would expect them to pursue it not only as to those that might be guilty of wrongdoing with reference to the actual happenings, whatever they were, but also pursue it as to anyone, civilian or military, in the course of the command, from the small —the smallest unit on up, that might have been guilty of suppressing anything of substance about it. Now, that's the general position of the committee. I want the committee also to fully fulfill its obligation to those that may be accused of crime, for us not to try to pass on their guilt or innocence in any way. That's a fundamental principle of our American system. Now, let me make clear that I think the Army has fully kept faith with our committee, in that they told me, as chairman, sometime in August of this year, that they had this matter, the charges. They had information about it now, that they were pursuing it.

Steve Buchester: Yes.

John Stennis: It was understood between us that they would give a report to the committee in due time. Later, about the middle of October of this year, they came by and mentioned again and showed me 2 or 3 photographs that are now in the news, and said that their information was that these were photographs concerning this incident. So, I point that out with— Emphasis, because on their own they brought this up and followed up, and now they followed up and appeared here today at our request. The committee further had no letters or information from any outside source at any time about this matter until just 2 or 3 days ago. I mention that because something's been said about letters coming in from —various sources over the last several months. We just didn't have any mail on this matter. Now, I don't know when these trials will start or when they'll be completed, but we are going to keep a very close surveillance over this entire matter and have the proper assurances from the Army that they will do the same. Sir, I have a— Secretary Risa's statement will speak for itself. I have not read separately the sanitized version. I haven't had a chance. Just got it a few minutes ago. Senator, I don't know what's in the sanitized and what's not. Senator, all right, I'll answer a limited number of questions, gentlemen. Senator, Senator, you say that there's some pictures that will be in the news that you all saw in the committee this morning. Can you tell us in a general fashion what these pictures— No, I don't think that I should go into that now. These— they were making available to us some evidence they had. Who helps be used in these trials. So, uh, I'm not at liberty to go into that at all. Senator, what's your personal reaction to this? Well, it is quite serious indeed. I'm not passing on the guilt or innocence of anyone, but, uh, it's serious from any viewpoint. Has the nation been damaged? Well, I— that remains to be seen. But, uh, if these facts are true, it's certainly contrary to, uh, —to our ethics, to our principles, to the things that we stand for, and even in wartime, I say, if those facts are true.

Steve Buchester: Senator—

John Stennis: Contrary to every American principle of warfare— I'm referring to the women and children now— war is war, and it's rough gore. Sherman said war is hell, and that's about That's about as good a description as you can find. But these were civilian people, and women and children included. Senator, have you ever seen a case this bad? Well, I don't know that I've seen one of this type. I don't know. This first— this is my first impression of a case of this kind. Is there anything to lead you to believe that there are other incidents like this? No, I have no knowledge along that line. I'm going to make inquiry, though, in that field.

Steve Buchester: Why?

John Stennis: Well, I have no— well, I want to know what— if this is the entire picture, if it's an isolated instance. But I have nothing on that now. Senator, what about prosecution of men who have been discharged, the civilians? Can the Supreme Court rule on this? Well, that's a very serious legal question. I'm sure it'll come up. I'd rather the judicial officers would pass on that, but there's a very grave question involved there.

Seymour Hersh: Is there a possibility they will not be prosecuted?

John Stennis: Well, I think they will be prosecuted, as I understand it. It's a point, though, that will certainly be raised in their defense, a legal point.

Steve Buchester: Senator John Stennis of Mississippi, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Committee, commenting last week after having heard the testimony of Army Secretary Stanley Resor on the incidents at My Lai IV. Here are some excerpts from Secretary Resor's testimony, the sanitized version of testimony released after he testified before the Armed Services Committee last week. I deeply regret the occasion for this morning's visit. It is difficult to convey to you the feelings of shock and dismay which I and other civilian and military leaders of the Army have experienced as the tragedy of My Lai has gradually unfolded before us. I know you share these emotions and fully appreciate the gravity of this incident. I would like today to discuss the facts surrounding this occurrence and to outline for you the progress of our investigation. Let me now review the known facts concerning the tragic events which took place at My Lai 4 Hamlet, Song My Village, Quang Ngai Province on March 16th, 1968. My Lai 4 hamlet is located in an area which is now, and has been for several years, under Viet Cong control. Intelligence reports indicate that it has been the traditional home of the 48th Local Force Battalion, considered one of the best Viet Cong battalions in the country. Although the area was within the tactical area of operations of the 2nd ARVN Division, U.S. forces had conducted prior operations in the vicinity and had suffered moderate casualties, principally from mines and booby traps. In March 1968, the 11th Infantry Brigade, a unit of the Americal Division, made plans to conduct an operation in this area, and a provisional task force known as Task Force Barker was assigned the operation. This task force, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Barker, The helicopter was composed of 3 companies drawn from 2 battalions and designated A, B, and C. On the morning of March 16th, following a 3-minute artillery preparation on its landing zone, which is thought to have produced few, if any, casualties, Company C, commanded by Captain Medina and consisting of approximately 105 infantrymen, made a helicopter assault immediately west of My Lai 4. I was there. Company A simultaneously occupied a blocking position to the north, and Company B made a helicopter assault into an uninhabited area to the south. The 1st Platoon, commanded by Lieutenant Calley, led the advance and physically occupied the cluster of habitations that constituted the hamlet. Most of the buildings were then burned or otherwise destroyed. The operation terminated at approximately 6 PM on that day, And Task Force Barker was withdrawn. The task force commander's after-action report for the entire operation indicated enemy losses as 128 killed. It made no mention of civilian casualties. Friendly losses were given as 2 killed and 11 wounded. However, the only U.S. casualty clearly attributable to the My Lai assault was one soldier who shot himself in the foot. During the day, Reports received from an Army helicopter pilot who had supported the operation suggested there might have been unnecessary killing of noncombatants at My Lai. As a result, the brigade commander was directed to conduct an investigation of the incident. During this informal investigation, he interviewed the task force commander, an S-3, and the commanders of 2 companies which had been in the immediate area. He also received some reports of unnecessary killing through Vietnamese channels. The brigade commander concluded that approximately 20 noncombatants had been inadvertently killed by preparatory fires and in crossfires between friendly and enemy forces, and that the reports of unnecessary killing of civilians were merely another instance of a common Viet Cong propaganda technique and were groundless, a view apparently shared by the Vietnamese district chief. He forwarded this finding to the commanding general of the Americal Division. The matter was not brought to the attention of the U.S. Army in Vietnam or MACV headquarters or the Department of the Army. Over one year later, in early April 1969, the first suggestion that something extraordinary had taken place at My Lai reached the Department of the Army. At this time, we received identical letters dated 29 March 1969 and originally addressed to Secretary Laird and five members of Congress. From a Mr. Ronald Ridenour. In these letters, Mr. Ridenour, a former soldier who had heard rumors about a supposed atrocity from fellow soldiers, alleged that Task Force Parker had been assigned the mission of destroying My Lai and all its inhabitants. He went on to describe in considerable detail several instances of alleged murder which he believes had occurred there. Upon receipt of these letters, the Army immediately initiated a preliminary inquiry And on April 23rd, 1969, the Chief of Staff directed the Inspector General to conduct a full-scale investigation of the allegations made by Mr. Rudenauer. This investigation took place both here in the United States and in Vietnam and involved interviews with 36 witnesses, ranging from the commander of the 11th Infantry Brigade to riflemen who participated in the operation. On August 4th, 1969, the investigation was transferred to the Provost Marshal General. Since that date, criminal investigators have located and interrogated over 75 witnesses, 28 of whom are still on active military duty. They've also visited the site of the incident and interviewed local Vietnamese officials and former inhabitants of the hamlet who witnessed the alleged killings. An Army combat photographer, President My Lai, took a number of photographs which he did not turn over to Army officials. We obtained copies of his slides in our— in August of this year. Thank you. I have the documents here and can show them to you this morning if you wish. As you know, General Talbot, commanding general, Fort Benning, has convened a general court-martial to try Lieutenant Calley for the premeditated murder of 109 Vietnamese civilians. In addition, charges of assault with intent to kill 30 noncombatants have been filed against one of Calley's squad leaders, Staff Sergeant Mitchell. An Article 32 investigation of the charge against Sergeant Mitchell is expected to get underway shortly, having been held up for some time by a defense request for time to obtain additional evidence. A number of critical issues remain to be resolved. Primary among them is the extent to which the members of Company C were acting pursuant to orders from their company commander or higher headquarters when they destroyed My Lai's buildings and fired upon its unresisting inhabitants. This aspect of the case is being accorded a very high priority. In addition, it is estimated that besides Lieutenant Calley and Staff Sergeant Mitchell, There are at least 24 former members of Company C, 9 of whom are still on active duty, who must be deemed subjects of the continuing criminal investigation. The efforts of 7 criminal investigators are currently focused upon the task of developing evidence concerning the actions of these men. It is estimated that several months may elapse before all of the allegations presently under investigation can be fully evaluated. Those were excerpts from the testimony of Army Secretary Stanley Rieser. —before the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week. Sy, the Army recently came out with an announcement saying that a year after President Nixon's proclamation that we wouldn't have offensive biological weapons, they're finally going to destroy them, and that that's a year-long program. But they say they're still going to have something called defensive biological weapons research. What does this mean? Is America out of the biological weapons business, or is What's going on here?

Seymour Hersh: Oh, definitely not. We're still going to be in the biological warfare business in a pretty significant way. Defense of biological warfare has always been— you know, that's always been one of the phrases tossed around by the Pentagon. What it means is that, of course, that you have to have strong abilities to deter attacks and also abilities to detect a biological warfare attack. So, of course, To the military's way of thinking, the only way to deter an attack with, let's say, if the Chinese Communists were to suddenly attack us, or the CHICOMs were to hit us with a sophisticated version of a Japanese Type B encephalitis, why, again, in some military minds' view, the only proper response would be to respond with the same sort of Japanese Type B encephalitis. Right. This kind of thinking really dominated much of the biological warfare program in the early '60s, and there's a little bit of it still lingering. The basic thrust, I think, of the defensive research program will be to develop ways and means of detecting tests, of detecting enemy offensives against us. And, of course, to do this, you have to test your own defenses. So, the best description of defensive biological warfare research —is the development of new lethal biological agents that would thus be tested against your newly developed biological detection mechanisms. As somebody in the White House— I talked to somebody in the White House about this about 3 months ago, when I wrote a newspaper article sort of critical about their inability, at that point, to get going on destroying the stockpiles. Anyway, he said the problem with this definition is that it sounds very much Like what we've been doing all along, that is, developing agents to test on our defenses. So this is going to be going on, and I think it's fair to say, in a reduced way. Right now, the United States— or before the Nixon announcement— oh, had certainly more than 2,500 civilians and military men involved in biological production and research, the production of weapons. Right. And now it's just going to be cut back. The programs at Fort Detrick, Maryland, the sort of infamous warfare— biological warfare center near Washington, and also at the Pine Bluff, Arkansas, arsenal, which is where they stockpile the stuff, these are going to be severely cut back. I wouldn't be surprised if in the next few months the administration's going to announce a plan to turn them over to World Health Research, or HEW, or something like that. What is going to happen, though, is that about Oh, 250 or so civilian scientists are going to be assigned to the Dugway, Utah, proving grounds, which, as you know, is the site of another infamous incident in our chemical and biological warfare annals, the killing of nerve— by nerve gas of 6,000 sheep in 1968. Anyway, 250 or so scientists, as I said, are going to go out there, plus maybe 150 or 200 Right. Military scientists are all going to be assigned to do defensive biological warfare research. One should note that, of course, this total of around 400 or so would mean that the United States, after a unilateral cutback in biological warfare, is going to have more scientists devoted to the development of biological warfare than any other nation in the world. One of the things that I've been yelling about and And others in the last couple of years is that it turns out, after all the smoke has cleared away, that Russia has a very small program in offensive biological warfare, largely because they think it's sort of a madman's game. And it is. We're not out of the business until we can get the Army and the White House to really think hard about what defensive biological warfare research is, why, with all these Millions of megatons, you know, we have stockpiled around the world. We need biological warfare in any way, even as a defense. I mean, I should think our nuclear weapons are our defense, our deterrence. We have to really rethink that and get out of the business totally. Until that happens, we're in trouble, I think. The other point I could make is that a couple of the programs out of Dugway, Utah, are going to be classified, although they The White House, in announcing the disarmament a year ago— Henry Kissinger, this is, in a background talk— assured newsmen that there would be no classified programs. So there's one contradiction. And I understand on good authority that the Army was— one of the reasons for the long delay is that everybody was very patient in the National Security Council. They gave the Army a number of chances to make make requests and appeals on the cutback. And at one point, the Army came up with a list of programs it wanted kept under defensive biological warfare out at Dugway, Utah. And one of the programs that they described as defensive included, as I said, the development of new kinds of biological agents, ostensibly to be used against our defensive mechanisms. It's the old con game, I think, on the Pentagon's part. I think President Nixon probably believes, on the basis of briefings that he gets from the Pentagon, that everything's okay, and they simply don't tell everybody what's going on. They don't tell the White House, for example— I doubt if they do— that these defensive programs are going to call for a lot of offensive research inevitably. And the The Pentagon's simply sort of hunkering down. It's going to wait out this new attack. And who knows, in a year or so, if we're all around, why they could maybe begin to revive talk about the Russian menace or the Chinese communist, CHICOM menace, and maybe get the program on a larger scale again. It's still, as I said, the biggest in the world.

Steve Buchester: One of the things that I recall from your writings is that As they manufacture these biological weapons, and even if they say that they're doing this for defensive purposes, that they still have to have certain bacilli or things in cold storage, that the ability to immediately reproduce more out of what they've— the minimum that they've got in cold storage is very great, and that it would be very easy for them to go back and start producing this again.

Seymour Hersh: Sure. I mean, no question. That, that, that if they're not— if they haven't shut down the program totally, which they are not going to do and which they will not do, they will have the capability within a week or 2 weeks, or as long as it takes to ferment, you might say, some of this stuff. I'm talking about— the diseases, by the way, in the arsenal— this is sort of interesting— are anthrax, a form of anthrax, which— Pulmonary anthrax. In one of the forms, pulmonary anthrax, can be up to 99% fatal. Other very highly infectious diseases, like tularemia, that are terribly easy to produce and, again, easy to cause disease. You know, one just sort of— you know, your mind goes gah, gah at the thought of these guys running around in these laboratories. You know, it's a sad thing. It's a sad thing that we can't—

Steve Buchester: Right.

Seymour Hersh: Well, you know, with the major war going on in Vietnam and with all the other problems, it's not too surprising that there isn't that much attention. Everybody seems to think a White House announcement does the job. It just means we're going to have to keep on pushing them.

Steve Buchester: Now, it took the Army a year to develop this program, and the Army said in its announcement recently, when they said that they were going to destroy these weapons, that it had taken them a year. because they had to develop various safety procedures so that they could destroy these things without killing everybody within miles. And I note that this past week, a scientist at Colorado State University expressed some fears that what if something happened while they were destroying the things out at Rocky Mountain Arsenal, they could destroy all the wheat in the United States. Do you think it really did take them a year, from what you know, to—

Seymour Hersh: No.

Steve Buchester: —to develop the safety procedures?

Seymour Hersh: No, of course not. It took them— didn't take them very long at all. What it was was the inevitable lobbying over what to do and the appeals made to the White House, the National Security Council and the— you know, that's all it was. Sure, they had some problems. One of their first plans for destruction apparently didn't meet some of the specifications set up by the Public Health Service. I'm not too worried about that. You know, their safety record has improved a lot. You know, I think the chance of anything escaping— of course, when you get into biologicals, what does escape is so terribly lethal and so, you know, exotic and bizarre that we wouldn't know really how to cope with it. But I think, you know, the chances are very small. But, of course, as anybody with any sense And everybody who has any sense knows that's a much greater chance than it should be. We simply shouldn't have any of this stuff. In fact, it has leaked out. You know, we've tested— I don't know if I've said this before in one of our interviews here, but we've tested biological agents in the outdoors since the early '50s— plagues, anthrax. We usually go down to Micronesia, and we've tested them outdoors there in the '50s and '60s with planes, just dropping Not them out of just planes. And you've tested them on people? planes spraying this stuff. We have right now 13 different types of dispensers for about a dozen different types of jet planes and bombs, bomb cluster units for biological weapons. I mean, literally, not just chemical and biological. For biological alone, these have been tested very carefully at Eglin Air Force Base, and also— not with weapons, with simulated agents, but with live stuff, hot stuff, as they call it. Yeah. In Alaska, for one place, and again in Micronesia, and again in Dugway, Utah. We spread our goodwill around there.

Steve Buchester: And what about chemical weapons? Where does this leave that? Where do we— what do we produce in chemicals beyond tear gas types of things? And is that— that just still goes on, I take it, under all the existing presidential orders?

Seymour Hersh: Well, if anything has happened, Is that, you know, we've now made it pretty clear that tear gas and chemical agents such as cacodylic acid and the herbicides that are being used in vast ways in South Vietnam are really almost sacrosanct. You know, we've now stripped off what— The military sort of— you know, one of the interesting things about chemical warfare, the stuff we used in Vietnam, is that after they learned how to use it, It began becoming sort of an effective tool, particularly the use of anti-crop materials. There's going to be a report soon— I don't know when this is going to be broadcast, but sometime in the next— around the end of December, there's going to be a report that 90% of all the crop spraying, the spraying that we've done against rice— ostensibly, of course, the goal is to deny the Viet Cong rice in South Vietnam. 90% of this spraying, according to the government's own studies, has done nothing but deny civilians rice. Only 10% has been traced to have caused the enemy any difficulty. It was, you know, sort of a mass starvation program. And this has become very useful for the military in its war. And therefore, when the criticism began about biological warfare— oh, it was at its height when Congressman McCarthy of New York was pushing it in '69. The Pentagon began to start thinking— some of the more rational people there began to think we could deal off biological warfare in exchange— get— you know, we won't have to have the chemicals and the tear gas, as sort of riding on the wave of bad publicity caused by anthrax and plague. So they have stripped off the really sort of leading edges of the criticism, the exotic biologicals, and we're left really with a pretty lethal chemical weapon, chemical arsenal. Again, I can offer no great cheeriness. The stuff's being used with impunity without much— you know, people keep on— I'm always— you always hear about these great Studies and proposals to study really once and for all. A group of scientists will study the ecological damage caused by this, by chemical warfare in South Vietnam. We've been using it since '61. And I always get the image of the scientists crawling up and down 1,000-pound bomb craters looking for ecological damage and defoliation damage. Scientists are a great breed, you know. I think maybe some of them feel a little guilty.

Steve Buchester: Yeah.

Seymour Hersh: guilty about, about helping to make this stuff. But still, they're really a great breed. They're way behind it.

Steve Buchester: They did decide not to use one of the herbicides. I believe it's 2,4— was it 2,4-T?

Seymour Hersh: 2,4,5-T, which—

Steve Buchester: 2,4,5-T. But then it turned out that they were used still— somebody was still using that anyway in the American military.

Seymour Hersh: Somebody was, a general who allegedly was supposed to get court-martialed according to one of the newspaper stories about 3 months ago. And I I haven't seen anything further about a court-martial.

Steve Buchester: And this was the stuff that caused birth defects, as far as we know. You know, you talk to a GI—

Seymour Hersh: I just talked to some who were here for one of the war crime tribunals that are being staged, and they tell you, the guys who have just come back, they tell you about being in the Delta and places like that where they've dumped a lot of this stuff, and seeing all Oh, lots of kids with flippers, no arms. That's the way they put it. A lot of flippers going around, little kids with no arms or funny stumps instead of legs. And, you know, thalidomide, we think of. And of course it's 2,4,5-T. And of course there's no real evidence, no real systematic study that's been done on what's going on.

Steve Buchester: Was the American Association for the Advancement of Science supposed to do another panel?

Seymour Hersh: Yeah.

Steve Buchester: Yeah. They sent another group over there.

Seymour Hersh: Right. They sent a group over there this summer. Dr. Matthew Messelson of Harvard, I understand, is the guy who's going to issue this new sort of attack. And he may not, but he has the information. And this is, I think, about 4 years now the American— the AAAS, we call it— has diddled around with the subject of chemical warfare.

Steve Buchester: And meanwhile, of course, we're using If we can turn from that to another equally gloomy subject, which you've been the major author initiating investigation in, My Lai. A year ago, we were talking about the information you'd developed that the Army was going to file charges against— then it was just Lieutenant Calley who was accused of killing 102 civilians. Right. And there have since been charges against numerous other men who were there, and also charges against officers who weren't there but are alleged to have known about it. A year— your book then, Me, Lai, Ford: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath, came out in May. Here we are a year after you did your first interviews and wrote the first articles about Cali, and you've watched some of the court-martials in progress. How do you feel about this a year later? Do you think these guys should be court-martialed? The GIs at the— the antiwar veterans who set up these war crimes tribunals, which were held recently in Washington, said Khalid's a scapegoat. He shouldn't really be court-martialed, because it's the people higher up. But what do you think about this at this point, a year later?

Seymour Hersh: Oh, I think it was from the beginning, It was very clear that he was a scapegoat. He had the right attitude. He didn't want to do anything to hurt the Army. I think the Army's— I'm not saying there was— people sat down and said, let's charge Calley first, because he's got the right kind of gung-ho attitude, and we'll— if we say swing, he'll go gladly. That may not have happened. But the fact was, that was his attitude. I did talk to him on November, I think, 11th or 10th, 1969.

Steve Buchester: Right.

Seymour Hersh: And I was struck, of course, by his great patriotism. I'm sort of amused to since read in an article in Esquire that he's turned against the war, but you really can't blame him for that. The other thing I think that's happening to Khaled that's sort of interesting is that I think he may end up— when I talked to him, he refused to let me— to help me in any way, and when I began to push for information about whether or not Captain Medina ordered him to. He told me off the record— I guess I can say that now. A lot of— most of it we talked about was off the record. But he told me off the record that, of course, Medina charged him, had given him the orders to kill, and Medina knew what was going on. He may not have been telling the total truth, but he certainly told me this then. But he then also said, I won't testify against him. I'll never name him. I'm going to be faithful to my captain, for whom he had a great deal of respect, Captain Medina, who, as you know, has been charged With a number of things, including the ultimate responsibility for a number of deaths there, almost all of them. The Army still hasn't sort of owned up to the number of people that were killed. They still talk about 176 or something, when really it's at least 400 or 350, and maybe even more than that. Anyway, Khalidi's since changed his tune, and he just may— and I hope his lawyers do, after the court-martial is now on Christmas recess. Right. Yes. It'll come back, I think, on January 11th or something like that. They just may— Calley just may go on the stand and raise the very pertinent issue about what he was ordered and what the general mode of operations were. I think Calley, as I said in my book— I've since been sued for $110 million, which is an awful lot of money. And I'm always— I'm a little cheery, but To talk about motivation. But I think Khalidi certainly demonstrated he was an enthusiastic officer at My Lai. And it's awfully hard to— you wonder what would happen if he'd been a little more restrained, if some more people might be walking around now. But one could always argue, too, that they'd probably be bombed by now or chemical warfare'd or defoliated by now anyway. But anyway, the point is that he was pretty enthusiastic that day, and it's gonna be awfully hard for him not to be, to be found guilty. I think the evidence is very clear that he's guilty of something. What the Army will do about it, I don't know. I, I think if they let him off, they're raising the real issue, which we all want them to. Kelly, of course, is incidental. There's, there's, you you know, 500 or 5,000 Kalis running around in Vietnam. Mark Lane's book, which was published by Simon Schuster, Conversations with whatever it was, Veterans or something like that.

Steve Buchester: Conversations with Americans.

Seymour Hersh: With Americans. Um, I, I tend to believe almost all of those, those grisly things.

Steve Buchester: Um, Kali's lawyer, his civilian lawyer, George Latimer, and Sergeant Torres, was it, or Private Torres?

Seymour Hersh: It was Private then.

Steve Buchester: Private Torres, lawyer Charles Weltner, the former congressman, Democratic, liberal Democratic congressman from Georgia. Both seem to be pushing in the same direction. Latimer's pushing now on his contention that Medina gave orders, and therefore— and has not yet gone much to denial that That the events that you've described and that all these witnesses have described at the court-martial actually took place. He's trying to push this on Medina's orders. Welter seems more wanting to push it on higher orders than that and has now gotten the right to have 3 men testify who he says are CIA agents. So at least in both of these cases, they seem to be heading toward this higher authority question which you raised in the book. What is their thinking? What are they thinking at the Pentagon about this these days? You talk to people there. The Peers Panel did raise— bring— suggest that charges be brought against a number of higher-ranking officers, including General Coster, who was, at that point that the charges were brought, was the commandant at West Point. What are they thinking now inside the Pentagon?

Seymour Hersh: Well, you know, I don't talk that much to Pentagon people. I'm in touch with a lot of the lawyers in the case. Most of the people in the Pentagon are directly connected with the case. I have talked to a couple of Westmoreland's people on it, just sort of casually. I mean, nobody is going to lean over backwards to have conversations with me about it, I should think, in the Pentagon. But nevertheless, I'm— I'll tell you, there's a lot of great stories left in My Lai. And I'm— right now, I've been involved for 3 or 4 months doing the prisoner of war thing, you know, this sort of another sort It's a sort of insane story, the notion that North Vietnam is stringing up all of our prisoners by their fingernails or something. It's sort of another brainwashing type thing. And I'm just getting done with that now. And I'm going to go back to My Lai because I'll tell you a couple of things that are fascinating. One is that the Army is in a real bind itself professionally at the very highest Right. —about the questions being raised by My Lai and by the fact that the investigation into— it's really opened up, you know, the old cliché about Pandora's box. There's a staggering amount of— or staggering number of massacres being looked into by the Army right now. This is— they've got special task forces set up. They're concerned about Nuremberg. You know, when I first began to do the research on My Lai, oh, in October '69, a couple of guys in the building, in the Pentagon, said— talking about the higher, very highest generals— said, you know, the real fear here is about war crime trials. I never heard that mentioned again. And it's being mentioned again now. There is a fear, I think, in the Pentagon that unless they can do something to keep the Khaled case at a reasonable level, and the Medina case, that— Right. There will be a chance to bring up the broader issues of just whether or not Westmoreland or the other generals running the war are responsible. And I think the way to approach it, and the way I think I'm going to, is I think if you talk to 25 colonels who've been in Vietnam and had experience and asked them about war crimes and got them to talk honestly, you'd find every one of them has great and extensive and detailed knowledge of war crimes. I think that's a good point. In fact, every one of them has probably suppressed information about war crimes while they were serving as battalion commanders in South Vietnam. The next question you can raise is, if that seems to be the standard of information available to colonels, would it be reasonable to assume that this sort of information was available to Westmoreland and others around him? And maybe then you could bring it up. I think the way they're now proceeding in the court-martial is a little haphazard. The CIA isn't really the approach.

Steve Buchester: Right.

Seymour Hersh: into the higher questions that Weltner's trying. Weltner's sort of flailing around very diligently and working very hard to try to—

Steve Buchester: But they wouldn't let him get the higher officers that he wanted to—

Seymour Hersh: That's right. He wanted to raise this question I'm just talking about, and he was not allowed to. I think he's off on— I don't know where he's off on now. His boy has an IQ of 89, and I'd like to see something, some attention paid to that, the sort of caliber of kid That's there and the level of instruction. In the Calley case, it's been a— you know, you read the newspaper accounts of these court-martials. For me, it's always like a little— you know, it's like I'm reading a drama anyway, since— I'm not falling over backwards to be modest, but I did have access to almost most of the important Army studies and Army interrogations for my book on the massacre. And much of the stuff that these kids are telling Everything that's compelling in the court-martial has either been told by me or told by the local newspaper or told by the House Armed Services Committee, in a sense, which did a study of it. And yet the daily newspaper coverage of the trial, and I guess reflects none of the other knowledge that's available. You never get any insight into whether a witness is covering up or not covering up because of— for whatever reason. You never get any real feel— Right. For what, what's going on. Are the witnesses— the, the, what I'm— the point I'm getting is that the guys who are out are talking the same way they did. The guys who are in are having very vastly altered stories, much milder stories. The, the helicopter pilot Thompson who landed simply got up on a court and simply said he never saw Calley. I've read and published testimony direct from Army files describing how he yelled at Calley and how he recognized How he picked him out of a police lineup in the Pentagon a year after My Lai. And it's important, I think, to make the— you know, for the reporters covering it. We play a little— it's sort of a ritual we have in the courtroom that somehow nobody can be aware of the other information, the outside information. But, in fact, I think everybody who's a careerist or a lifer in the military has not been a candid witness. And I think that might tell a little bit about the attitude of the military towards the court-martials. I think that's a very good point. Another problem for me is that the whole level of the performance, both by— particularly by Khaled's lawyers, has been pretty bad, and the trial judge. Not very, you know, not very astute law. And none of this feeling has come through in the reports I've read. I've talked to lawyers who, you know, who are very intimately connected with the court-martial and who find it almost a spectacle.

John Stennis: I think that's a good point.

Seymour Hersh: Some of the ludicrous decisions handed down by the judge and some of the ludicrous approaches. So, so people hearsay of Calley's defense lawyer. He never seemed— for a long time, he attempted to make the defense in the beginning that Calley didn't do it. When it became very clear that the Army was going to go ahead and put people on the stand who told how Calley did do it, then he changed his tune. And it'd sort of be interesting to sort of analyze What's his motives? Did he honestly think at the beginning that the Army wasn't going to be as candid as it could? Because certainly in the Mitchell court-martial, the Army didn't give— not only 3 witnesses were allowed to testify then, for a variety of reasons, but certainly the Army didn't break its back to get a great case against Mitchell, who was subsequently discharged. So you have a case here where the lawyer for Khalidi in that court-martial begins on the assumption that the Army's never going to get around They're presenting a good case. He starts attacking the few first witnesses. And remember the first stories about Kelly? Nobody laid a glove on Kelly. He was walking out smiling. Well, it's clear that his lawyer then, at that point, had some expectations that weren't met when the Army began to prosecute the case fully. So, reading between the lines, you can sort of get an idea of what the other side expected anyway. And the Army surprised them. The prosecutor's done a great job. And I think that's the point. And now he's switching his defense to the logical one. The trouble is that you're going to go to Medina, and you will be able to put the blame, the burden, on Medina. And then we have the gap. Medina will then put the burden, perhaps, on the man who's dead. The Lieutenant Colonel—

Steve Buchester: Barker.

Seymour Hersh: Barker is dead, and it ends there, if we go that route. So I'm not sure about that route. I think the big thing to do is for one of these guys to Somewhere, somebody, somehow to draw in the— what were the normal mode of operations in South Vietnam and Quang Ngai. I could add also that Quang Ngai was, as I later found out after I did all my writing about it, was the site of some of the heaviest chemical warfare attacks. It was a longtime enemy stronghold, and we were dumping chemicals on it all the time. This, by the way, I mention that because it would go an awful long way to explain the attitude of the— hostile attitude of the people.

Steve Buchester: And what about the HABERS Subcommittee, the House Armed Services Subcommittee, that did the investigation on the House side of the Capitol into My Lai, refused to release its information to both sides of the case, and therefore the trial judge ruled in the Mitchell court-martial that nobody who had testified before House Armed Services Services Subcommittee could be called. And this severely, at least to some degree, has limited the Army's case because a lot of those people are showing up at the Calley court-martial because the judge there ruled—

Seymour Hersh: And boy, are they talking, aren't they?

Steve Buchester: How did— what is your sense of the legitimacy of that? I take it that's a normal congressional procedure. Well, I— legally— They can get off the hook on that if they want to.

Seymour Hersh: I'm sure legally it's— I mean, I can't even begin to discuss I don't want to discuss the merits of it from a legal point of view. I think— but I think, of course, it's a little bit like international law here. You resort to legality and, you know, and 1957 Supreme Court decisions. I think it was the Gens case, they called it. Only when you really— it seems to me, when you've got something else you're talking about. In the case of Hebert and his subcommittee, they did a great job investigating the cover-up.

Steve Buchester: Yeah.

Seymour Hersh: By the way, I was always sorry— you know, Harper's ran half my book dealing with the massacre and sort of the day-to-day gore, which most people read who read about anything at all about it. And the other half of the book dealt with the cover-up, which, among other things that's sort of fascinating, is at one point 14 different agencies knew about the massacre within about 4 or 5 days. 5 officers, including a general, met in an air-conditioned trailer 2 days after My Lai to discuss how to to cover it up. So what you had— not even dealing with the question of mass guilt, you know, in terms of standards of operation in South Vietnam, you certainly have a very broad question about the total failure of the Army as an institution. 800, 900 officers and men knew about that incident right away, and nobody did anything. Yeah, it's certainly a total failure, much greater than the public's been led to believe, which— this has not been exhausted at all or even begun to be approached in terms —in terms of the implications of other investigations and other incidents, and the mode of operation, which then goes back to the initial question. You know, just a gook. Just a gook is the standard defense for traffic accidents. Anyway, you know, you killed him. Were you drunk? Oh, no, but it was just a gook. Okay, case dismissed, out of court. But to get back to the basic point, Abare's report was excellent.

Steve Buchester: Right.

Seymour Hersh: I'm sure it infuriated a lot of people in the military because it was so honest. This is a report on the cover-up that was issued in the summer without very much press attention, even though it had a lot of new facts. And I think it's just been sort of a reaction the other way since then. You know, we ain't going to do nothing, said Mendel Rivers about 5 or 6 times, that hurt those boys at My Lai. His point of view is totally different than mine. I agree with him. I think the boys at My Lai aren't the guilty ones at all. But I think it's a very important report. In, in Rivers' case, he's trying to protect the Army. In my case, I think, it's exactly the opposite point of view.