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American Experience investigates the My Lai massacre an atrocity during the Vietnam War that killed more than 300 unarmed civilians.
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00:00:00The Taliban mingle with civilians, they use them for cover, which obviously complicates
00:00:14any decision process by a commander on the ground.
00:00:18You don't know who to trust.
00:00:19You don't have a scorecard to tell you this village over here is friendly.
00:00:23Their order was to kill everything in the village.
00:00:26What in the hell is this?
00:00:27These are civilians.
00:00:28They were Viet Cong if they were dead.
00:00:30To this day, I always think to myself, what could I have done to stop it?
00:00:34And I don't know.
00:00:35On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear.
00:00:41The bullets were just kicking up all over the place.
00:00:44The devastation down there already is just unbelievable.
00:00:49Time has come today.
00:00:54Time.
00:00:57Time.
00:00:59Time.
00:01:01Time.
00:01:02Time.
00:01:02Time.
00:01:06Time!
00:01:36It was the summer of 1969.
00:01:41I was an army prosecutor at Fort Brennan, Georgia.
00:01:45I was sitting in my office and my supervisor walked in, closed the door, looked at me and
00:01:51said, have you ever heard of Pinkville?
00:01:54And I said, no, I haven't.
00:01:59And he briefly described what Pinkville was.
00:02:01There was a place on a map of Vietnam, and there had been an operation there.
00:02:08CHARGES HAVE BEEN MADE THAT TROOPS KILLED AS MANY AS 567 SOUTH VIETNAMESE CIVILIANS DURING
00:02:15A SWEEP IN MARCH 1968.
00:02:17A LIEUTENANT HAS BEEN CHARGED WITH MURDER AND A STAFF SERGEANT WITH ASSAULT WITH INTENT TO MURDER.
00:02:26BY THAT POINT, THE ARMY HAD CONDUCTED AN INVESTIGATION.
00:02:31A LOT OF RECORD HAD BEEN ESTABLISHED.
00:02:33A LOT OF PEOPLE HAD BEEN INTERVIEWED.
00:02:36DID CAPTAIN BEDINA SAY ANYTHING ABOUT WHAT THE COMPANY SHOULD DO IN THE VILLAGE?
00:02:43HE SAID THAT THERE WASN'T GOING TO BE ANYTHING LEFT A LAB IN THE VILLAGE.
00:02:52IT WAS CLEAR THAT MANY, MANY PEOPLE HAD DIED.
00:02:56OLD MEN, WOMEN WITH CHILDREN IN THEIR ARMS AND BABIES.
00:03:01AND THEY HAD BEEN UNARMED.
00:03:03THEY HAD BEEN UNRESISTING.
00:03:05AND THEY HAD BEEN, IN MY JUDGMENT, MASTERED.
00:03:08THEY HAD BEEN UNRESISTING.
00:03:11THEY HAD BEEN UNRESISTING.
00:03:12THEY HAD BEEN UNRESISTING.
00:03:13THEY HAD BEEN UNRESISTING.
00:03:14THEY HAD BEEN UNRESISTING.
00:03:15THEY HAD BEEN UNRESISTING.
00:03:16THEY WERE ALL JUST LIND UP AND SHOTING LIKE THAT.
00:03:18IT SORT OF REMINDED ME ON NUTSFIELD THE HITLER.
00:03:22THERE SHORTLY APPEARED THAT THERE HAD BEEN AN EFFORT TO COVER UP WHAT HAPPENED AT MI-LI.
00:03:25to cover up what happened at My Lai.
00:03:28That seemed to be clear.
00:03:30Did Mr. Thompson mention anything to you
00:03:32about landing alongside of a ditch
00:03:34that contains a large number of bodies?
00:03:36No, sir, he did not report to me
00:03:39any incident of a U.S. soldier firing into a ditch.
00:03:45To bring a case like this,
00:03:47given its potential magnitude, it had to be solid.
00:03:50It had to be very strong.
00:03:52It had to be believable.
00:03:54And it had to make believable an event
00:03:56which nobody would ever want to believe.
00:04:00The question was, what was this scale
00:04:02that we were dealing with?
00:04:04How big was this?
00:04:07And who did it?
00:04:10Who killed these people?
00:04:24Charlie Company was a cross-section of just your general basic young people at that point in time.
00:04:31We were from all over the country, you know, East Coast, West Coast, Blacks, Whites, Mexicans.
00:04:43There was nothing special about us.
00:04:47We were just your common, ordinary team.
00:04:52I'd gone to college for a couple semesters after high school.
00:04:56I wasn't cut out for college.
00:04:57I went to be a teacher.
00:04:58And it was like, no, the wrong profession.
00:05:02Having grown up with parents that came from World War II
00:05:06and people that were in the Korean War and everything being exposed to their generations,
00:05:12you know, you felt it was basically your duty to go ahead and go to war.
00:05:19My father was a battalion commander in World War II.
00:05:23I considered him kind of a cross between John Wayne and Steve McQueen or something.
00:05:28I did have a notion of what it was going to be like,
00:05:35that it was patriotic, that it was the thing to do.
00:05:41I was born in Utah.
00:05:43Pretty typical Mormon family.
00:05:46I went into the Army right out of high school.
00:05:49In the Vietnam War, US Marines battled North Vietnamese throughout the day.
00:05:54Vietnam was all around us, you know.
00:05:57It was in the press and talking about it in school.
00:06:00And we had a real strong curiosity.
00:06:03We wanted to see it for ourselves.
00:06:05The artillery is trying to suppress a communist attack on Baker Company,
00:06:09which is about 5,000 meters to our front.
00:06:12Aside from just the sense of adventure,
00:06:14I was caught up a little bit in the domino theory,
00:06:18that it truly was a necessary war.
00:06:23You know, when I first went,
00:06:25I was into the idea that I was going to free these people,
00:06:29and stop communists from spreading.
00:06:33I didn't go over there to be a hero or nothing.
00:06:35I just went over there to do my job.
00:06:38When I first landed in Hawaii, I thought I was in paradise.
00:06:55I mean, 70-some degrees at 3 o'clock in the morning,
00:06:59and then they bussed us out to Schofield Barracks,
00:07:03and there's banana trees and everything,
00:07:05so I thought it was paradise.
00:07:06Well, it didn't take long for that to end.
00:07:10The East Range, where we did most of our training,
00:07:13it was straight up and down, and it was a real jungle.
00:07:16It's quite clear that in Hawaii, they excelled themselves in the jungles.
00:07:23Charlie Company was voted the best company in the first 20th Battalion.
00:07:31Their captain was almost a folk hero.
00:07:35Medina had come up through the ranks from a Mexican-American background.
00:07:40He related to the men. He was a hard man.
00:07:44He didn't give them an easy time, but they respected him,
00:07:48and many of them loved him.
00:07:51The motto of the Army is, follow me,
00:07:54and he was the type of individual you would follow anywhere and do anything for.
00:08:01I found Captain Medina to be a very tough individual and very demanding.
00:08:07He wanted us to be something unique and different and, you know,
00:08:13strong and capable and a force to deal with.
00:08:19Captain Medina came up with the idea that we were going to be called the Death Dealers.
00:08:24He wanted us to carry aces of spades, and every time we killed a Viet Cong,
00:08:29we were to leave the Ace of Spades on it,
00:08:31so that, you know, they knew that it was from the Death Dealers.
00:08:37Lieutenant Callie was platoon leader of 1st Platoon.
00:08:42Young lieutenants are nightlight very well.
00:08:45Some are quite gung-ho.
00:08:47Some are quite, uh, interested in making a name for themselves.
00:08:52Callie was sort of a mixture. He wanted to fit in.
00:08:55I think when he found the military, he thought he found his calling.
00:08:58He found a place to fit in.
00:09:00My first impression of Lieutenant Callie was he was always trying to please Captain Medina.
00:09:08He'd go out of his way to do things that were not called for and trying to, you know,
00:09:15trying to please Captain Medina. And that, to me, it made, in my mind, it made Captain Medina resent him even more.
00:09:23Captain Medina would just call him a little shitter or something.
00:09:29And he ridiculed Callie. He made Callie feel inadequate.
00:09:34And Callie was always trying to do things to show that he was a real officer.
00:09:40By asserting his rank, he basically shielded himself from his men. He isolated himself.
00:09:50Rank went to his head. And that's, that's a no-no.
00:09:54For the first month, it was like, where's the war?
00:10:15You know, we had a lot of free time.
00:10:19The lounges, you know, the bars, it was really nice.
00:10:22We said, hey, I could do this for a year.
00:10:26We walked through the villages, mostly women, children, older people.
00:10:31We really didn't encounter anything when we went.
00:10:35It didn't seem like there was a war going on over there.
00:10:45He would go to a village, set up a perimeter.
00:10:48Medics and doctors would come in, treat the civilians.
00:10:53And we'd sit there and play with the kids.
00:10:55And there was nothing else to do.
00:10:58We always had fun with the kids.
00:10:59When I was young, I saw American soldiers.
00:11:10Whenever they came, they would gather up everyone.
00:11:13They would bring cake and candy for the children.
00:11:17Everyone would have some, and then they would let us go home.
00:11:20I never would have imagined, never would have thought Americans would kill us.
00:11:34When my children came home and asked if American soldiers would kill us, I said, no, Americans don't kill.
00:11:50The task force Barker was set up around February.
00:12:13It's real function was to try and break the infrastructure of the North Vietnamese army
00:12:20and the Viet Cong in that central plain of Quang Nghai province.
00:12:29Quang Nghai province had a reputation for 300 years for hating foreign occupying forces,
00:12:36whether they were Chinese, French, Japanese, or Americans.
00:12:40They just did not like strangers coming in among them and then exercising military power.
00:12:58Great areas of the province had been declared pre-fire zones.
00:13:02What that meant was you just kept up a constant round of the bombing of villages.
00:13:19The US military loved to quote Mao Zedong, especially the saying that the gorillas are the fish and the people are the sea.
00:13:27But their solution to that problem was to drain the sea.
00:13:39Bullets can kill the enemy, but bullets can also make an enemy.
00:13:42They can manufacture an enemy.
00:13:44And I felt at times during my stay there that we were cranking out enemy soldiers or sympathizers
00:13:52by the way we treated the place.
00:13:53Soldiers had thought they were going to go in there and be welcomed by the people
00:13:58whom they were going to save.
00:14:00Some of them I thought was going to be like going into Paris after D-Day.
00:14:04What they encountered instead was hostility.
00:14:08Outright hostility and resentment from these people.
00:14:15When I was eight years old, I realized the war had come.
00:14:18There were many times when the American soldiers would set up operations around this area and raid and shoot.
00:14:28So my mother brought me and my siblings together and taught us to flee.
00:14:32Every night we had to crawl into the shelter to sleep.
00:14:36We had to avoid the American bombs and shootings.
00:14:38That was our misery. War from the Americans.
00:14:51We started pulling regular patrols end of January, beginning of February.
00:14:57Once we started down to the Ting Phil area, we started to lose people.
00:15:06They were being picked off one by one.
00:15:10This is when we got our initiation into the realities of Vietnam with booby traps, mines, snipers.
00:15:19The Quinni area was called Pinkville because on the military maps it was shaded a bright kind of shimmering pink.
00:15:34The color pink took on associations for us.
00:15:37That went way beyond anything you'll find on some color chart.
00:15:41It meant, it meant the prospect of death.
00:15:45Weber was the first member that we lost.
00:15:52That had a real impact on the whole company because we actually had somebody killed now.
00:16:02We were down by a river and walking on the rice paddies and we were going down to this village.
00:16:10It was kind of in a corner of the river and we started taking sniper fire.
00:16:16The Tank Cowley wanted us to go across the river to where that sniper fire was coming from.
00:16:23Well, we hadn't hardly got started and there was a sniper around and it had got Bill Weber.
00:16:30He pretty well died on the scene, but not without a lot of anguish.
00:16:34He was a good guy to everybody, you know, and when he got killed, just like part of your family,
00:16:45they destroyed part of your family.
00:16:48Because I considered Charlie Company part of my family.
00:16:52It wasn't long after that, we started taking more casualties.
00:17:03We're in the process of crossing, receiving, sporadic sniper fire. Over.
00:17:08Mark ball.
00:17:09Mark ball.
00:17:11Mark ball.
00:17:12When you're dealing with snipers, it's like a roulette wheel.
00:17:17You know, there's 30 or 40 of us out there walking around.
00:17:20Which one of us is going to get it?
00:17:22You know, it's a roll of the dice and the same thing with the booby traps.
00:17:31The infantryman lives on the ground.
00:17:33He walks on the ground.
00:17:34He sleeps on the ground.
00:17:35He eats on the ground.
00:17:36When you've got booby traps and land mines, all of a sudden the earth becomes the enemy in a way,
00:17:43because you don't know what it may conceal.
00:17:46Where do you sit?
00:17:47Where do you put your feet?
00:17:49There or there?
00:17:50And that choice is life or death.
00:17:53You can't fight.
00:18:12There's nothing to fight.
00:18:15You can't fight a mine.
00:18:17You can't fight a booby trap.
00:18:19You can't fight a sniper.
00:18:20You can try and find that sniper and eliminate them.
00:18:24But they hit and run.
00:18:28You know, I just want to get up and yell, you know, and then we did, you know.
00:18:33You know, I said, we yelled, come on out, you know.
00:18:38But it wasn't, you know, the snipers here, they were probably over there laughing at us,
00:18:43you know, and they wouldn't come out.
00:18:48They wouldn't come out.
00:18:50You know, they didn't come out.
00:18:53This went on for several weeks.
00:18:56They're gradually losing more and more wounded, until they came to a minefield.
00:19:07A second platoon was in one area, and first platoon was ahead of us in another area.
00:19:12But we walked into minefields almost simultaneously.
00:19:19Once the first mine was tripped, anybody who moved was setting off booby traps.
00:19:24It was like nonstop.
00:19:27Somebody would go to try to help somebody to trip the booby trap.
00:19:31They would hit a booby trap.
00:19:33They'd get blown up.
00:19:34I could see them going off, and I heard people screaming,
00:19:37Maddie, Maddie.
00:19:38You lay there for a minute.
00:19:39You lay there for a minute.
00:19:40Then you know you got to get up.
00:19:42You got to go.
00:19:42We were a close-knit group.
00:19:47We were there for each other, and that was the problem.
00:19:50Somebody got hurt, you went to help regardless.
00:19:54You didn't care about the other mines.
00:19:55You went to help somebody.
00:19:57And in the end, it cost more individuals getting hurt.
00:20:03Bobby Wilson was in my squad.
00:20:05We were in single file, and there was other guys behind us.
00:20:08And we were walking along, and this huge explosion went off,
00:20:12and it knocked me to the ground, and Bobby Wilson had tripped the bouncing Betty.
00:20:17Bobby was pretty well split in half right up the middle, and Medina was running through the minefield,
00:20:28barking out orders.
00:20:31He seemed to be fearless.
00:20:35He was split as if somebody had taken a cleaver right up from his crotch all the way up to his chest cavity.
00:20:43I've never seen anything that looked so unreal in my entire life.
00:20:49We took a poncho, and we spread it out.
00:20:52The medic started to pick him up by the legs.
00:20:54I reached underneath his arms, placed him onto the poncho, and we set him on top of another mine.
00:21:04My company by this time had suffered approximately 25 to 28 casualties.
00:21:10I was down somewhere to the vicinity of 105 men.
00:21:19I believe that the month of February was our most devastating month for Charlie Company.
00:21:27It drove us to the ground.
00:21:29It's just like if you had a wound, and they would stick something in that wound and go a little bit deeper.
00:21:42Every time somebody else got killed, you know, it was like that wound, and it'd go a little deeper.
00:21:48You know, and the hurt never stopped.
00:21:54Down, boy.
00:21:55Get down.
00:21:56Over left.
00:21:59Your mindset has to change, and you're going to somehow figure out how to adapt.
00:22:05Hands down.
00:22:07Your attitude towards the villagers now, everybody's an enemy.
00:22:11You don't know who to trust. You don't know who is a friend, who is a foe.
00:22:19You don't have a scorecard to tell you, well, this village over here is friendly to you.
00:22:23It's okay to go there.
00:22:25Or this village over here is sympathetic to the communists.
00:22:29And you start to wonder, who's who?
00:22:31They know where the mines and booby traps are. They have to, or they can't work in the fields.
00:22:39They can't move between villages. You know, so they know where everything is.
00:22:43But they're not going to tell you. They're going to let you blow your leg off.
00:22:49You began to hate, and the hatred becomes very intense and very real.
00:22:53Finally, you just throw the rule book away.
00:23:03The rules of the game have changed.
00:23:06Instead of just going through villages, casually going through them,
00:23:10you went into villages, started ripping apart.
00:23:18That became the standard now.
00:23:23We're not nice guys anymore.
00:23:28Individuals would just come out of nowhere and do things that you just find hard to believe, you know.
00:23:37I remember one guy that held a young girl at gunpoint and made her perform oral sex on him,
00:23:43and then he cut off her ponytail and stuck it in his helmet.
00:23:47And it always mystified me how somebody could walk around with that ponytail and not get questioned about it.
00:23:58I don't think Medina had any interest in knowing all the details of what's going on out there.
00:24:04If officers and NCOs start behaving badly, then there is absolutely nothing in a difficult situation
00:24:14where young men are feeling frightened for their lives, not knowing the difference.
00:24:18They expect to be shown what is right and what is wrong by the officers, by the NCOs.
00:24:23And when that discipline has fallen apart, then they were on the road to hell, frankly.
00:24:31Dear Dad, how's everything with you?
00:24:33One of our platoons went out on a routine patrol today and came across a 155-millimeter round that was booby-trapped.
00:24:42It killed one man, blew the legs off two others, and injured two more.
00:24:50On their way back to the LZ, they saw a woman working in the fields.
00:24:54They shot and wounded her, then they kicked her to death and emptied their magazines into her head.
00:24:58It was murder. I'm ashamed of myself for not trying to do something about it.
00:25:05This isn't the first time, Dad. I've seen it many times before.
00:25:09My faith in my fellow men is all shot to hell.
00:25:13I just want the time to pass, and I just want to come home.
00:25:21Saturday, we're being dropped in by air in an NVA stronghold.
00:25:25We don't expect any letters for a while. Please keep writing them. I love and miss you and Ma.
00:25:32I love you. I love you. I love you.
00:25:46By the time it got to the 15th of March, Charlie Company were pretty well wound up.
00:25:54But they were told that there was a very good opportunity the next day, that they would meet the enemy head on.
00:26:03There was a lot of talk about a battalion, the 48th VC Infantry Battalion.
00:26:09They were thought to be a pretty crack outfit, and they were said to be housed in and around the My Lai area.
00:26:19The brigade commander, a man called Colonel Oran Henderson, wanted his battalions to be much more aggressive with the enemy.
00:26:28And it's fair to say Henderson wound up Medina, and Medina wound up Charlie Company.
00:26:38I told them this would give them a chance to engage the 48th VC Battalion,
00:26:43that the 48th VC Battalion is the one that we had been chasing around the Task Force Sparker area of operation,
00:26:49and that we would finally get a chance to destroy the 48th VC Battalion.
00:26:55Medina was psyched because here's our chance to confront the enemy.
00:27:02We're getting our revenge on you.
00:27:05We're going to tear your ass apart for what you've done to us.
00:27:09We were to shoot literally anything that moved.
00:27:14If it was growing, cut it down. If it was a building, burn it.
00:27:19If it was a well, poison it. If it was alive, kill it.
00:27:24I remember him telling us that the villagers had been warned out, there shouldn't be any innocents there.
00:27:33And I think there was even questions asked, is how would we know if they're innocent or not?
00:27:38And he said something to the effect, if they're there, you got to assume they're the enemy.
00:27:43There were no civilians.
00:27:46That is the crux of what was told to us. There are no civilians.
00:27:54These are Viet Cong, Viet Cong sympathizers. It's a Viet Cong stronghold. They are all Viet Cong.
00:28:00Medina, I believe, was very clear that they were facing the 48th Viet Cong Infantry Battalion.
00:28:09That was the intelligence he had been given and he had no reason to question it.
00:28:14The problem was that the information was wrong.
00:28:17Their 48th Infantry Battalion were 150 miles away, on the other side of Quang Nha Province.
00:28:24And so the entire premise for going to My Lai was entirely false.
00:28:36The morning of the 16th started early.
00:28:41The mood was sort of somber, but there's an edge of excitement.
00:28:47We know that we're going into something big and we're going to deal with them.
00:28:50A little fear, anticipation.
00:28:58This was our chance to prove ourselves as a fighting unit.
00:29:06We were instructed to pack a triple basic load of ammunition. Whereas a rifleman would carry 180 rounds,
00:29:15he was to triple that number. So we were expecting great resistance in that village.
00:29:21I would say that probably most of us didn't eat very much. We were all anxious,
00:29:27concerned about what was going to be happening. This was going to be an all-out war. This was going
00:29:33to be shades of Iwo Jima. The helicopters would ferry them in three groups and drop them in the paddy
00:29:41field. It's about 200 meters from the village. The first group of men would go through, led by Kali.
00:29:50The second platoon would come in next. They would follow up with the third platoon and Medina's group.
00:29:56This was the order that came down from on high. They would have to move forward quickly and very aggressively.
00:30:03I was on the lead helicopter and it was probably nine helicopters and six gunships on the side of us.
00:30:15And I remember making a big turn and heading back north straight for my line.
00:30:21Cloud, this is blocking two secrets leaving fire. Nine o'clock. Yellow smoke. 200 meters. Automatic weapons. Over.
00:30:27We began hearing radio chatter that the helicopters were fired on. The helicopter pilot turned to us
00:30:36and told us that we were coming into a hot LZ. The meaning which was quite clear. We were under fire.
00:30:47As we touched down, the door gunners were firing. There were rounds zinging kind of all around.
00:30:54It's hard to tell where they were coming from at that point. We hit the ground and almost immediately
00:31:02started firing into the village area. The squad leaders, myself and others,
00:31:09were instructing their soldiers, let's get up on line. Let's move it. Let's move it. You got to get in
00:31:13position. We're going to move out. I remember somebody yelling, there's people moving in the village and
00:31:21then we could see people running. And so we all opened up. I think we had it in our minds that
00:31:29we were not going to get pinned down out there.
00:31:37We assumed that we were going to hit VC only. That the civilians would be gone from that entire village.
00:31:45When we went in further, we did start finding people. Like they started coming out of their house.
00:31:55And we're saying, well, wait a minute. What the hell is this? They're not supposed to be in here.
00:32:01At first, nobody did anything. Then a couple crazy guys said, hey, they must be VC.
00:32:07Some of the guys started shooting.
00:32:19Once the first civilian was killed, it was too late. Period. Whoever killed the first civilian,
00:32:27that was the end of the end of the situation. It went out of control.
00:32:31It was just shoot, shoot, shoot at anything. I don't care what move. I mean, it's just, you know,
00:32:35the person would come out of a hut, bang, shoot. And it's just complete carnage there that day.
00:32:44We did see bunkers and we did start throwing grenades into the bunkers.
00:32:50It was about that time that we started hearing the screaming from inside.
00:32:57Around 8.30, three American soldiers came to my house.
00:33:01They pushed six of us down into the shelter and threw a hand grenade in behind us.
00:33:08And then they used their machine guns to shoot us down.
00:33:11My entire family was blown into pieces. The only person left alive was me.
00:33:20Suddenly, an American soldier came in carrying a gun.
00:33:23I saw my father collapse. And then my mother, my grandfather and my grandmother.
00:33:33They all continued to fall.
00:33:38My brother, younger than me, only three years old.
00:33:43Suddenly, they blasted his head open.
00:33:45One shot in his head blasted onto the floor.
00:34:01We were a unit that was full of anger, frustration.
00:34:05We wanted contact. We wanted to fight the enemy.
00:34:10And we were told we were doing it.
00:34:11I am a soldier and I received and obeyed the orders that are issued to me by my superiors.
00:34:21Their order was to kill or destroy everything in the village.
00:34:24The children happened to be there.
00:34:27The people of that village were Viet Cong or Viet Cong sympathizers.
00:34:31Maybe some see it differently.
00:34:34That's the way I see it.
00:34:35I was a photographer on the operation that day.
00:34:43I just photographed everything that I came upon.
00:34:53I was coming up to a group of people who were huddled and they had some, you know, American GIs surrounding them.
00:34:59One soldier spoke up and said, hey, here's a person with a camera.
00:35:05And sure enough, the soldiers backed off and I moved up and I took a photograph of these people.
00:35:12You can see the fear in the faces on there, especially the small children.
00:35:16And the older woman trying to protect the daughter.
00:35:20Then all of a sudden, you know, that next incident, automatic fire.
00:35:24They were all shot and they all dropped.
00:35:25I saw them drop to the ground.
00:35:33As I recall that particular day, I was flying a gunship tagging along behind the OH-23 flown by Hugh Thompson.
00:35:42We were told it was a typical combat assault near an area called Pinkville on the map.
00:35:47It was a strange looking map for that particular area because it looked like there should be a lot of buildings and everything.
00:35:56But when you get out there is really not much of anything, just small hamlets scattered about.
00:36:03The OH-23 flown by Hugh Thompson had a door gunner on either side and he would fly low treetop level, basically trying to draw fire or make somebody run.
00:36:13It's pretty much a bait type operation.
00:36:18Hugh Thompson's job was supremely dangerous. The kill rate was something like 40 or 50 percent.
00:36:25I think that what motivated Hugh to join the Army was just his patriotism, his love for his country.
00:36:31He was a soldier soldier. He was very much of a military mentality.
00:36:36His father was a lifer in the Navy. His brother joined the Air Force and served two or three tours of duty in Vietnam.
00:36:46He also thought that flying a helicopter would be a very exciting profession.
00:36:50The morning of My Lai, Hugh Thompson and I came on station at about 7.30 and it was crystal clear.
00:37:04We came in at altitude and dropped down and started flying low level.
00:37:10We thought that we were really helping the men on the ground and that was our main objective.
00:37:15We came in and strafed the tree lines on either side of the landing zone to
00:37:22suppress anybody that might want to jump up and shoot.
00:37:25We got no fire. We were never fired upon.
00:37:30We started to just check the perimeter.
00:37:34We saw people leaving the area, which was not unusual. It was a Saturday morning.
00:37:39People would go to market on Saturday morning. We thought, wonderful, they're getting out of the way.
00:37:45Let's continue our recon. We were off or out of that particular area for 10, 15, maybe 20 minutes.
00:37:54When we came back, those same people were dead or dying on the road.
00:38:00At some point during the day, we started seeing bodies accumulate in the village.
00:38:15Women, kids.
00:38:24I'd never seen anything like that. It was bad.
00:38:30We lingered by one of the bodies that we marked. It was a young female with a chest wound.
00:38:42But she was still alive.
00:38:46Mr. Thompson decided he'd move back, stay at a hover and watch.
00:38:51And we saw a captain approach the woman, look down at her, kick her with his foot, step back,
00:39:03and just blew her away right in front of us.
00:39:07Later on, we found that it was Captain Medina, Ernest Medina, who did this.
00:39:11As we got deeper into the village, we were given more or less a change of orders.
00:39:25And we were to stop firing and to start moving people that we found over toward the center and pushing them into the center of the village.
00:39:35And they were being picked up by Kelly's platoon, more or less, and moved onward.
00:39:42They started to take us all away.
00:39:54Everyone in the house, they took us to leave.
00:39:57All of us were taken away.
00:40:00I held one of my children and led the other one.
00:40:04I walked with them until they told us to stop.
00:40:07They made us walk from inside the village, across the rice fields.
00:40:13I pulled my kids to go with me.
00:40:15I dragged my kids, but they still hit us, kicked us.
00:40:22By the time they got out to the other side, they'd gathered together about 170 old men,
00:40:29elderly women, mothers with small children.
00:40:31And pushing them, herding them, across to the eastern side of the village,
00:40:39near to where a big drainage ditch was situated.
00:40:43And they were all standing around on the edge of the ditch, and Kelly was there with his platoon.
00:40:51And Hugh Thompson was flying around in his small scout helicopter.
00:40:56We continued to recon, checked on some of the people we'd marked earlier with smoke.
00:41:07They were gone.
00:41:09At that point, Mr. Thompson noticed there was an irrigation ditch that he saw people in.
00:41:16So he landed the aircraft.
00:41:18He approached this soldier that was near the ditch and said,
00:41:28these are civilians.
00:41:30We got to help them out.
00:41:31And the soldier said, yeah, we'll help them out of their misery.
00:41:39Mr. Thompson went through every scenario he could to give benefit of the doubt to the men on the ground.
00:41:44He did not want to believe that our people were doing this.
00:41:47And he came back, got in the aircraft.
00:41:51We lifted off, and we were 15, 20 feet off the ground, and we heard automatic weapons fire.
00:42:02Suddenly, Kelly gave the order to start firing, and Kelly and a young man called Meadlow
00:42:08turned their rifles, their M16 rifles, on this group and began shooting.
00:42:13Mothers started diving with their children into the ditch.
00:42:20One mother described it later as like ducks going into the water.
00:42:25Lieutenant Kelly told me, Meadlow, we got another job to do.
00:42:31So we started pushing them off, and we started shooting them.
00:42:37So then all together, we just pushed them all off, and just started using automatics on them.
00:42:45It didn't surprise me that Paul Meadlow was one of the participants with Kelly in shooting down that group of people.
00:42:59Paul did have a strong sense of duty.
00:43:06He just did what he was told.
00:43:07I've thought about what I would have done many times if Kelly would have put me in the position he did Paul.
00:43:18And I would like to think I would have just said, you've got to be kidding me,
00:43:25and walked away, and taken my chances that he's doing to shot me.
00:43:31I don't think I could have done it.
00:43:33I just really don't think I could have done it.
00:43:38Kelly yelled at me to come help him.
00:43:42And I just kept walking.
00:43:43I didn't even turn around and answer him.
00:43:46And I thought at the time, well, you know, that's disobeying an order.
00:43:50He could do anything he wants to me.
00:43:52But I didn't care.
00:43:53I wasn't going to help him kill people in a dish.
00:43:58To this day, I always think to myself, what could I have done to stop it?
00:44:04And I don't know the answer to that.
00:44:06They started to push all the people down into the ditch, including my family.
00:44:19And they started shooting at will.
00:44:23After the first round, my mother and I were still alive.
00:44:27So were my two younger siblings.
00:44:30After the second, my two younger siblings died.
00:44:32But my mother was still alive.
00:44:34At the third shooting, my mother died.
00:44:38To survive, I lay under my mother's stomach as the ditch filled with blood.
00:44:48My daughter, Lian, I used my breast to cover her mouth so she wouldn't cry.
00:44:55I saw my father walking around.
00:44:58I wanted to tell him, please lie down, dad.
00:45:01If you do, you will live.
00:45:02But I didn't dare say it.
00:45:06I just let my father walk around there.
00:45:09And they went over there and shot him.
00:45:11Half of his head blew away.
00:45:13I was coming out of the other end of the village and Kelly was standing at a low point and he was waving us and directing us across the ditch.
00:45:33And I got to the ditch and it was full of bodies.
00:45:37And that's when your senses just shut down, I mean, I don't, to this day, I don't know how I walked across that ditch.
00:45:47I remember looking down and making eye contact with somebody in the ditch and it was like I was looking at a mannequin.
00:45:57Mr. Thompson was just beside himself.
00:46:03He got on the radio and just said, this isn't right.
00:46:11These are civilians, there's people killing civilians down here.
00:46:15And that's when he decided to intervene.
00:46:17And you have, uh, 15, uh, Mr. Charlie's event questions.
00:46:21He said, we've got to do something about this.
00:46:25Are, are you with me?
00:46:26And we said, yes.
00:46:27Thompson now sees a small group of Vietnamese people running along a hedgerow, running for their lives, heading for a bunker.
00:46:37And in hot pursuit of them are the men from Charlie Company.
00:46:42Mr. Thompson calculated they had less than 30 seconds to live.
00:46:47He told us, I'm going to go over to the bunker and get these people out myself.
00:46:53And if these American soldiers fire on these people or me when I'm getting them out of the bunker, shoot them.
00:47:01I remember thinking, how did we get into this?
00:47:08I was probably less than 50 yards from this helicopter.
00:47:11And I remember the door gunners of that helicopter pointing their machine guns directly at me
00:47:17and thinking, oh my God, what are they going to do?
00:47:22Three people came out, six people came out, 12 people, 11 or 12 people came out of this little bunker.
00:47:31That's when he got on the radio and called a friend of his, Dan Malians, a gunship pilot.
00:47:36And he said, Danny, I need a favor.
00:47:41Hugh and his crew had a group of people gathered up to be taken out.
00:47:46And I landed the helicopter, put them on, and we left with them.
00:47:53A gunship just never landed out in the boonies like that to pick up somebody.
00:47:57It was just not done.
00:47:59I don't know why we did it, other than the fact that those people need to be out of there.
00:48:06We went back to the ditch and I saw some motion down in the ditch.
00:48:12I saw this child move.
00:48:22I lifted my head up and saw a helicopter landing in the rice fields.
00:48:27I was really scared, wasn't sure if they were shoot again.
00:48:31But when I lifted my head, I saw three American soldiers approach.
00:48:35So I pretended to be dead.
00:48:39But the Americans, the three of them came down into the ditch.
00:48:43I looked up a second time and they came and pulled me out.
00:48:46I remember taking the boy in my left hand by the back of his shirt, thinking,
00:48:51I hope these buttons are sewn on or if the shirt lets go, I'm going to lose the boy.
00:48:58Mr. Thompson knew that Quang Nye Hospital wasn't too far away.
00:49:04We left the boy with a nun at the hospital.
00:49:09Told the nun, he probably doesn't have any family.
00:49:13Time just seemed like to go on.
00:49:17An hour could have passed or five minutes could have passed.
00:49:21After we got in so far, we did get a ceasefire, ceasefire.
00:49:29And then you just still hear a couple of guns shoot off.
00:49:33And then you hear the ceasefire again.
00:49:35They left my village in blood and fire.
00:49:56Wives lost husbands and children lost fathers.
00:50:00And our homeland and village were destroyed.
00:50:05When there were no more sounds of guns, they came home to bury the dead.
00:50:18I ran home and there was nothing left.
00:50:22My house was burned and destroyed.
00:50:25I couldn't recognize my relatives.
00:50:27They were all burned.
00:50:28There was nothing left.
00:50:29My grandmother, I called to her, Grandma, Grandma.
00:50:39I thought she was almost dead.
00:50:41She raised her hand up.
00:50:43She said, Grandma's here, dear, lying here.
00:50:46They shot me right in my arm.
00:50:48When I called to my sister, she was outside.
00:50:58She just lay there unconscious.
00:51:01But when she heard me call, she woke up and crawled over.
00:51:07The three of us hugged each other and cried.
00:51:09We were covered in blood.
00:51:29The cover-up of My Lai began immediately.
00:51:31As soon as they got back to their base, too many people knew that something odd had gone on.
00:51:40Already, Captain Medina had radioed to the headquarters, giving false figures for how many enemy killed in action there'd been.
00:51:49The official count was that 123 Viet Cong had been killed.
00:51:56So that cover-up was constituted within hours, really, of them arriving home.
00:52:05After the My Lai operation and we returned to base camp, Captain Medina told us,
00:52:10do not answer any questions from anyone, news reporters or anybody else, about this last mission.
00:52:19We all thought that we were going to get in big trouble.
00:52:23And so we didn't talk much about it.
00:52:29The rest of that day, we just started moving on deeper into the peninsula.
00:52:35We were told to take the high ground.
00:52:40And Medina specifically said, don't go past the wire because there's an old Korean compound up there and it's heavily mined.
00:52:51We got to the wire and Callie said, okay, you, you, you and you, we're going up the top.
00:52:58And Callie, uh, took Medina as the point man.
00:53:03They just barely got out of sight and Medina stepped on a mine, blew his foot off.
00:53:09And, uh, when they were medivac-ing him out, the last thing he yelled at Callie was,
00:53:16God got me, he'll get you for what we did.
00:53:20I don't remember if it was that day or the next day.
00:53:28All I remember is I was wearing the same fatigues and they were covered in blood.
00:53:35Mr. Thompson wanted me to come up and meet him and report what we'd seen to Colonel Henderson.
00:53:42He went in first, came out, didn't say anything, just showed me the door.
00:53:53I went in and told Colonel Henderson exactly that there was unnecessary killing of civilians going on that day.
00:54:03A lot of civilians.
00:54:05He made a couple notes on a legal pad, didn't really react to it in any particular way.
00:54:12dismissed me and I left.
00:54:15I met Hugh outside the command bunker.
00:54:19He was having a fit.
00:54:21I think he broke the flight helmet.
00:54:23He threw it on the ground.
00:54:25He wanted to tear his wings off his uniform, said he'd never fly again.
00:54:31Thompson reported this to his commanding officer in hopes of getting action.
00:54:36And there was no action, there was no word, there was no buzz, no nothing.
00:54:41After Milai, they sent him out by himself in very dangerous areas.
00:54:51He crashed four or five helicopters within a two, three month period.
00:54:55And he was beginning to think, and I don't think he was being irrational.
00:55:02He thought that someone was trying to make him go away.
00:55:05The higher ups in the army understood that something like this could get them court-martialed,
00:55:14could get the men under them court-martialed.
00:55:16So the picture that the military publicity machine attempted to put out was that there was no Milai
00:55:23massacre, that American soldiers were not involved in the killing and the slaughter of women and
00:55:27children and old people. This is simply communist propaganda and it's not true.
00:55:35This is 1968. Killing civilians by that time in Vietnam was an issue.
00:55:41Because of course, all the way up to Johnson, they were trying to calm people down in the United States.
00:55:47So there wasn't any doubt about the reason for their wanting to cover it up.
00:56:06Following the Milai incident, Charlie Company was sent out into the jungle for over two months straight.
00:56:15We were isolated and put out in the mountains. It was like somebody
00:56:25putting us out there so we wouldn't talk to anybody.
00:56:3354 days. 54 days we were out. No change of clothes hardly. We were sick. We all got dysentery.
00:56:45I truly believe that we were sent there to never return. That we were never going to make it out of there.
00:56:55And that just stuck in my mind. Why are they doing this? Why are they sending us out at night?
00:57:01You know, to get rid of these 12 people here? And then next night they send another 12 and get them?
00:57:08The company changed after that. And it was like nobody cared anymore.
00:57:21That, you know, it was, uh, it was all, uh,
00:57:28it had all been a game and the game was over. And we got whooped.
00:57:34I had been told of the incident several times by several different people and it became evident to me
00:57:47that there was a very real amount of truth behind the stories I had been told.
00:57:53Ron Ridenour was an aspirant journalist. He'd gone out to Vietnam to do his time there and had formed
00:58:03some very close friendships with members of Charlie Company. They were sitting down one day telling war
00:58:10stories and his friend said to him, Hey, do you hear what happened at Pinkville? And he said, No,
00:58:16what happened at Pinkville? He said, Well, we went in there and we just killed everybody. He said, What?
00:58:24Ridenour made a promise to himself that he would see if he could get some more evidence of this and
00:58:30bring it to the attention of the authorities.
00:58:32And after my return from Vietnam, I wrote a letter, a long definitive letter, which explained
00:58:42what the situation was as I knew it and exactly how I came across the information and what information
00:58:49I had. And I called for an investigation. I made 30 copies of the, of this letter and sent
00:58:56about 30 copies to various congressional leaders and administration.
00:59:04Inquiries start to be made of the American military. Where is this place, Pinkville? What has happened here?
00:59:14One of the investigators of the Inspector General's Corps is sent out to interview
00:59:21members of Charlie Company who are still in the military and subject to military discipline.
00:59:25And in very short order, the information goes up the chain of command and people in the Pentagon
00:59:33know that something pretty awful has happened.
00:59:37The machinery of justice starts moving. And so it's not going to be kept inside the army.
00:59:43And finally, Haberly decides to sell those pictures.
00:59:46The Cleveland plane, a plane dealer printed today a series of photographs. It says it got from an army
00:59:53combat photographer. And it says the pictures show the bodies of South Vietnamese killed by the Americans.
01:00:12Everybody saw those pictures. The pictures appeared in Life magazine and on nightly news stories over and over again.
01:00:19We'll now show the pictures published in the plane dealer and photograph from the newspaper,
01:00:25accounting for the poor quality. They were taken by Ronald Heverly while on a combat assignment for the army.
01:00:33The pictures become almost ubiquitous and they symbolize evil.
01:00:36And the more they're shown, the more difficult it is to kind of defend what happened at My Lai,
01:00:43or even to look at whatever extenuating circumstances might have been there at My Lai.
01:00:47Survivors have claimed that an American infantry patrol sweeping through their village in March last year,
01:00:53executed more than 500 unarmed men, women and children.
01:00:57It still isn't known exactly what happened in the Vietnamese village of My Lai,
01:01:02scene of multiple killings of civilians about 18 months ago. There are numerous charges.
01:01:09I got off work and I stopped at a bar to have a beer.
01:01:15And the news was on and it flashed a picture of Callie. And I thought,
01:01:21my God, that's my unit. You know, they brought up Medina's name and then I'm listening to people
01:01:29at the bar, them effing baby killers, this, this and that. And I just kind of sip my beer.
01:01:38I was going to junior college and over breakfast, I heard on the radio that the army was investigating
01:01:46a massacre in Vietnam. And I remember thinking, I hope that's not the one that I was involved in.
01:01:53Do you believe that there was a cover up of this incident in South Vietnam, of the incident at My Lai
01:02:014? I have no reason to believe there was. There was a huge uproar in the country.
01:02:09The top of the army were absolutely furious that something like this could have happened two
01:02:14years before nearly and been held so that they knew nothing about it. So they really wanted to
01:02:20find out what had happened and how and who had covered it up.
01:02:24They had to look for somebody who was a member of the team, but was not necessarily going to be
01:02:30accused of covering up a cover up. And the person they fell upon was Ray Piers.
01:02:37Piers had been a core commander in Vietnam. He'd had a very distinguished military career.
01:02:44And he was a deeply, deeply honourable and decent man.
01:02:46General, is there any doubt in your mind now that the massacre did take place at My Lai on March 16th, 1968?
01:02:54That's one of the things we're trying to determine.
01:02:55Piers made the decision, look, before I can decide what's been covered up, I gotta know what happened.
01:03:08And then the only way we're going to know what happened is to talk to everybody that was there that will talk to us.
01:03:14There were maybe 800 people in this battalion. And we had to contact every one of them and try to
01:03:20arrange for them to come to Washington and testify.
01:03:24When it finally registers and sinks in that there's something going on was when you actually started
01:03:32getting subpoenaed to the Piers Committee. What kind of trouble were we in?
01:03:36What kind of trouble were we in? We don't know.
01:03:42We were picked up in a military limousine, unmarked, and taken to the Pentagon.
01:03:48And I don't know how many levels down we went, but we went down.
01:03:53We went into what somebody referred to as a war room.
01:03:56And there were gigantic maps of My Lai all the way around the room.
01:04:01And they set us down at the end of the table, the microphone in front of us, feeling pretty small.
01:04:07Come on.
01:04:11The next witness is Sergeant Gregory T. Olson.
01:04:13Morning, Sergeant Olson.
01:04:14Morning.
01:04:19I show you also a 1 to 25,000 scale map, which has been introduced in the evidence as Exhibit Map 4.
01:04:26Would you take us through the village step by step?
01:04:30Well, I've seen some of my friends shoot women, children, babies.
01:04:37After you'd gotten out of the helicopter here in the landing zone, could you tell us the first thing that happened?
01:04:44I was in the second left. We landed here.
01:04:46All right. Could you mark about the location on there of the CP and just put a figure one and circle it?
01:04:53And which side of the village were we on? We're on the left or the right?
01:04:58Who was on your right? Who was on your left? Who was in front of you? Who was on the side of you?
01:05:01What happened? What time was this? Trying to, I assume, at that time I didn't realize, you know,
01:05:07that they were trying to synchronize, are you lying?
01:05:11Piers was distressed, terribly distressed.
01:05:14The accumulation of all these things over the weeks of testimony really got to him, I think.
01:05:19And when he then would come across someone like Hugh Thompson, the helicopter pilot,
01:05:24it was almost a relief to him to realize that there are still really good Americans.
01:05:33I would like you to repeat what you told the colonel about that particular interrogation.
01:05:40I'd, uh, told him about seeing the wounded Vietnamese. I, uh, told him that the captain had came over and
01:05:50shot one of them. I told him about seeing the bodies in the ditch. How many bodies did you tell him
01:05:58were in the ditch? I think I said about hundreds there. How did you feel at this particular time?
01:06:04It felt like it had been a massacre.
01:06:11In Piers's mind, Thompson had done just what you'd want a soldier to do. And almost nobody else ever
01:06:20had. And nothing happened as a result of it. What shocked Piers was that people were in a position
01:06:27to prevent it happening, had not done so. And then when they had knowledge that something had gone wrong,
01:06:32had actually then covered it up. Did Mr. Thompson mention anything to you about landing alongside
01:06:39of a ditch that contained a large number of bodies? No, sir. Did he mention to you seeing a target
01:06:47point his weapon in the direction of a ditch which contained some dead non-combatants?
01:06:54No, sir. He did not report to me any incident of a U.S. soldier firing into a ditch filled with
01:07:00non-combatants or with anybody. I think General Piers was frustrated by his inability to get any
01:07:10kind of sensible explanations from Henderson and concluded that Henderson, well, he was both
01:07:17incompetent and lying. I feel that the public is entitled to know that our inquiry clearly established
01:07:26that a tragedy of major proportion occurred there on that day. Piers knew that his report should be
01:07:35completely truthful, and it resulted in some 30 people from up through the ranks, from a lieutenant
01:07:41all the way up to a two-star general being charged with offences involved in the cover-up itself.
01:07:49Piers knew that there was no doubt in the cover-up itself.
01:08:01At Fort Benning, Georgia, today, the prosecution opens its case against First Lieutenant William
01:08:21Calley, Jr., charged with the murder of more than 100 South Vietnamese civilians at My
01:08:27Line.
01:08:31I was an Army prosecutor at Fort Benning, Georgia.
01:08:35The first case was going to be against Lieutenant Calley because he was to be discharged from
01:08:40the service in September of that year.
01:08:43And under the law, once he was discharged, the Army would no longer have jurisdiction to
01:08:47prosecute him.
01:08:50So there was some time constraints.
01:08:54He was not charged with the massacre.
01:08:58He was charged with what he did.
01:09:02That was not everything that was done in that operation.
01:09:06But I will say this, that the evidence clearly demonstrated that he was responsible for more
01:09:13killing than anybody else there by a long shot.
01:09:19Gentlemen, the accused stands here before you today, charged with four specifications,
01:09:27premeditated murder, are alleged to have taken place in the village of My Lai 4, 16 March 1968.
01:09:34This was going to be the first case in which the story in its entirety would be told.
01:09:44And so I wanted to tell the story in such a way for the jury to know, both circumstantially
01:09:52and directly, all of the others, to demonstrate quite clearly that what those charges said had
01:10:01occurred, had in fact occurred.
01:10:05These people were murdered.
01:10:07As we allege they were murdered, they were unarmed, they were unresisting, they were children,
01:10:13they were babies.
01:10:14I'll ask you whether, in your opinion, you were acting rightly and according to your understanding
01:10:25of your directions and orders.
01:10:29I felt then, and I still do, that I acted as I was directed.
01:10:35I carried out the orders that I was given, and I do not feel wrong in doing so.
01:10:45If the orders for that operation included unarmed, unresisting men, women, children, and babies,
01:10:53it was illegal, and a soldier has a duty to disobey such an order.
01:10:58A lot of people talk about My Lai and they say, well, you know, yeah, but you can't follow
01:11:03an illegal order.
01:11:05Trust me, there is no such thing, not in the military.
01:11:10If I go into a combat situation and I tell them, no, I'm not going, I'm not going to do
01:11:14that, I'm not going to follow that order, they put me up against the wall and shoot me.
01:11:20You train a man to soldier, you take him out of civilian life, you teach him to be a soldier,
01:11:25you train him to kill, you train him to follow orders, you express to him the importance
01:11:30of following orders, and you train him to kill.
01:11:33It's true, we kill our enemies.
01:11:35But there comes a point in time in which you don't kill your enemy.
01:11:39He's entitled to be treated humanely.
01:11:46The most serious offense outside of war is the taking of a human life.
01:11:51And in war, there has to be limits.
01:11:56I told the jury finally I wanted to speak for the victims.
01:12:00And I reminded them they did not receive any trial.
01:12:05And I said, what were their crimes, these victims?
01:12:09Was it the crime of an infant simply to have been born in My Lai?
01:12:12What were their crimes?
01:12:17And I said to them, at the end of the day, you are the conscience of our country when you
01:12:22were into this verdict.
01:12:24If I have committed a crime, the only crime that I have committed is in judgment of my values.
01:12:33Apparently, I valued my troops' lives more than I did that of the enemy.
01:12:43When my troops were getting massacred and mauled by an enemy, I couldn't see, I couldn't feel,
01:12:47and I couldn't touch.
01:12:48And that was my enemy out there.
01:12:50And when it became between me and that enemy, I had to value the lives of my troops.
01:12:58And I feel that is the only crime I have committed.
01:13:08Lieutenant William Calley has been found guilty.
01:13:11A jury that deliberated a record 13 days after the longest court-martial in American military
01:13:17history found Calley guilty on all four counts arising from the killing of innocent, unarmed
01:13:23South Vietnamese civilians at the village of My Lai.
01:13:28I don't think there has ever been a verdict which has been more controversial or generated
01:13:34a greater public outcry of opposition than the verdict in that case.
01:13:39There were mass protests around the country, draft boards were resigning, veterans were turning
01:13:49in their medals.
01:13:51It was enormous, overwhelming.
01:13:52It was a country that wanted this war to end.
01:13:58It was a country that wanted this war to end and a country which didn't want to believe
01:13:59that this had happened.
01:14:00that this had happened.
01:14:01But if it did, it wanted to say that it's our fault to collect this war.
01:14:07And not his fault.
01:14:08It had been used.
01:14:09All the wars that we've had in the United States would pick one man out of all them wars and
01:14:10say that it's our fault collectively and not his fault.
01:14:16It had been used.
01:14:17It had been used.
01:14:18All the wars that we've had in the United States would pick one man out of all them wars and
01:14:23say he committed atrocities against the enemy.
01:14:27We're too busy to complain as we go marching on.
01:14:28Good evening.
01:14:29President Nixon has ordered Lieutenant William Callie released from the stock market to
01:14:34the United States to the United States.
01:14:35And it's been used to be true.
01:14:36And it's been used to be true.
01:14:37But it had been used to be true.
01:14:38And it's been used to be true.
01:14:39It's been used to be true.
01:14:40It's been used to be true.
01:14:41It's been used to be true.
01:14:43That's been used to be true.
01:14:46All the wars that we've had in the United States would pick one man out of all them wars and
01:14:47say he committed atrocities against the enemy.
01:14:48Good evening. President Nixon has ordered Lieutenant William Calley released from the stockade
01:14:57and confined to his quarters, pending review of his conviction of life sentence for the
01:15:02My Lai Massacre. The announcement came amid a deluge of telegrams to the White House,
01:15:0725,000 a day, called the greatest expression of public sentiment by far on any issue of
01:15:12the Nixon presidency. Within a very short space of time, President Nixon, trying to
01:15:17cope with some of the political fallout from this, had decided that while his appeal hearings
01:15:23were being held, Lieutenant Calley should not be in prison, but he could be out on bail.
01:15:29President, you said that you intervened in the Calley case in the national interest. I
01:15:34wonder if you could define for us in greater detail how you feel it was served by your intervention
01:15:39in the case. I felt that it was proper for me to indicate that I would review the case
01:15:43because there was great concern expressed throughout the country as to whether or not this was
01:15:50a case involving, as it did, so many complex factors in which Captain Calley was going to
01:15:57get a fair trial. Ultimately, he had to serve in total about four months in the stockade at
01:16:06Fort Leavenworth. And by that time, it was deemed that he had served enough time, and he was released.
01:16:21I think that Nixon's intervention passed the word that nobody is going to get punished for what
01:16:29happened here. And so don't worry about it, people. And the result of this was to completely undermine
01:16:37any further prosecutions of other officers.
01:16:41Okay, get out of the way, please.
01:16:43Calley got away with it. And all the other people who were involved got away with it also.
01:16:52Did you ever have any doubts?
01:16:54No, I never had that actual feeling that I would be convicted. I always thought that my
01:16:57innocence would be proven in a court of law. I've always maintained that position, and
01:17:01I'm glad it's over with.
01:17:18I finally decided I had to say something. I wanted to make the president aware of my feelings
01:17:25about the case, and the jurors, and the victims, and the rule of law.
01:17:37I truly regret having to have written this letter, and wish that no innocent person had died at
01:17:43My Lai on March 16, 1968. But innocent people were killed under circumstances that will always remain
01:17:51abhorrent to my conscience. While in some respects what took place in My Lai has to be considered
01:17:57a tragic day in the history of our nation, the greatest tragedy of all will be if political
01:18:04expediency dictates the compromise of such a fundamental moral principle as the inherent
01:18:10unlawfulness of the murder of innocent persons, making the action and the courage of six honorable
01:18:17men who served their country so well, meaningless.
01:18:29If you take the total number of people who died at My Lai, which was 507, and put that alongside
01:18:35the two million civilians who died, it doesn't seem very much. But in terms of impact on America,
01:18:45and on the rest of the world, about how they conducted that war, clearly, it changed people's opinions
01:18:53towards the war. It was too big a price to pay, that if you're going to have to win this war
01:19:02by this kind of conduct, and it wasn't a price worth paying.
01:19:05People had been saying to themselves, well, what are we doing to these people? What are we doing
01:19:11to them? And then with My Lai, people began to say, what is it doing to us?
01:19:17Oh, it hurts me thinking about the innocent people that got killed. It hurts me now.
01:19:27Hurts me now more than it did then.
01:19:31Because then you're thinking about living.
01:19:35You get out and you're severely, you think about dying.
01:19:37It's been a while. Now I can sleep. But every once in a while, I dream again about how my father died,
01:19:50how my sister died, how they died next to me. I saw it all. I remember all the time.
01:19:58I could go back and remember all the sleepless nights that we had, everything that went on,
01:20:11my life, all the people that were killed there.
01:20:16Every day I try to make it easy. I thought that by drinking that I could make it easy and make it go away.
01:20:25When I lay down at night, it's still the same thing. Whether I drank, whether I didn't drink, it's still the same thing.
01:20:35Just the memories kept, it kept coming back, kept coming back.
01:20:46I will never forget.
01:20:49When I am reminded, I suddenly remember the pain.
01:20:52A chapter in the book opens.
01:20:56There is no way I will ever forget.
01:21:00I will never forget.
01:21:05As far as living with the shame of my life,
01:21:09I have no shame.
01:21:11I did what I was supposed to be doing.
01:21:14The shame rests with the politicians
01:21:16and the military.
01:21:18Not with me, the other members of Charlie Company,
01:21:23Lieutenant Callie, or Captain Medina.
01:21:26The shame lays with them.
01:21:29It's a national shame.
01:21:31The shame.
01:21:41Remember the shame he's been here.
01:21:46And I will never forget.
01:21:49The shame he is했다.
01:21:50He was doomed.
01:21:51I will never forget.
01:21:53I will never forget.
01:21:53Whoever had read.
01:21:54I will never forget.
01:21:54I will never forget.
01:21:54I will never forget.
01:21:55I will never beasting.
01:21:55The curse he is.
01:21:56Master he is.
01:21:57I will never forget.
01:21:58Whatever he in union of always,
01:21:58he will never forget.
01:22:00Neither did you want to forget.
01:22:00This is what we were.
01:22:28This is where we've been.
01:22:30This is who we are.
01:22:35The hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.
01:22:40This is our experience.
01:22:43The American Experience.
01:22:50Next time on American Experience, two paths.
01:22:54James Earl Ray is not the typical assassin.
01:22:57One destiny.
01:22:58Memphis police report that Reverend Martin Luther King has been shot.
01:23:03If he is the killer, why did he do it?
01:23:05We always said we were not concerned with who killed Martin Luther King.
01:23:10We were concerned with what killed Martin Luther King.
01:23:14Roads to Memphis.
01:23:15Next time on American Experience.
01:23:19There's more American Experience online at PBS.org.
01:23:28American Experience is available on DVD.
01:23:29To order, visit shoppbs.org or call us at 1-800-PLAY-PBS.
01:23:33Time has come today.
01:23:34Time has come today.
01:23:38Time has come today.
01:23:40American Experience is available on DVD.
01:23:45To order, visit shoppbs.org or call us at 1-800-PLAY-PBS.
01:24:10Time!
01:24:18Time!
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