Anatomy of a Massacre

In a Letter dated March 29, 1969, Ronald L. Ridenhour--a student at Claremont Men's College in California and a former Army specialist, fourth class, in Vietnam--wrote to the President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense and 23 members of Congress that, as a result of private conversations with men he knew in Vietnam, "It became impossible for me to disbelieve that something rather dark and bloody did, indeed, occur sometime in March 1968 in a village called Pinkville in the Republic of Vietnam."

On March 17, 1970, two years and one day after what is now known as the My Lai incident, Lieutenant General William R. Peers--appointed by the Army to head a panel studying the alleged suppression of the facts of the massacre--told the press, "Our inquiry clearly established that a tragedy of major proportions occurred there on that day." In the wake of these investigations and the similarity of their grisly conclusions, the Army has charged four low-ranking officers and several enlisted men with the atrocities and 14 other officers--including two generals, one the superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point--with suppression of facts in the case.

The second group of charges can result in individual sentences of no more than three years at hard labor, in the event of conviction, and the death penalty can be invoked for those proved guilty of murder. But the charges of suppression in the long run may well be the most damaging to the Army. Over the succession of war years, fragments of evidence indicating brutality by American forces toward Vietnamese civilians have circulated, gained currency, seen infrequent exposure in the media and evenresulted in occasional disciplinary action by the military. But the episodes revealed were generally assumed to represent aberrations resulting from the extreme stresses of combat, particularly the ugly sort of action that commanders and policy makers would never condone.

But the fact is that the decisions of commanders and policy makers led to the events in My Lai on March 16, 1968. The premises and assumptions of the war, the tactics employed in combat and the very nature of the military system made the event inevitable, and left to chance only the location, time and individuals involved. The jittery young troops of Task Force Barker, with only 85 days in Vietnam, and the peasants of Song My village (which includes the My Lai cluster of hamlets) had their gory confrontation because of a series of miscalculations and deceptions that can be traced to general policy of the war in Vietnam and to those who formulated and implemented it. I can say this because I was in a position to watch the My Lai episode unfold--step by sorry stey.

At the time of the massacre, I was a military-intelligence officer assigned to the advisory team in Quang Ngai Province, where Song My is located. My former commanding officer now stands charged with failure to obey lawful regulations, dereliction in the performance of his duties and false testiomony. The intelligence evaluation of the My Lai situation (called the order of battle) and the after-action report submitted by the unit involved in the atrocity were contradictory, and everyone with access to both documents knew it. Anyone with full knowledge of the situation had to assume a serious intelligence error or an inordinate number of civilian casualties as a result of the My Lai operation. No other conclusions were possible. For this reason, two general officers, three full colonels, two lieutenant colonels, three majors and four captains have been charged with suppression of evidence. The lesson of the My Lai massacre is not only that young Americans thrown into combat can react in a barbaric fashion but that their superiors, knowingly or unknowingly, are likely to cover up such actions. A chilling reciprocity.

That the lesson was learned because of events in Quang Ngai Province is fitting; among the 44 provinces in Vietnam, it is perhaps the best microcosm for all the mistakes, deceptions, Cruelties and insanities that have made the war the ugly thing it is. Quang Ngai is one of the most heavily Populated of Vietnam's provinces and, therefore, a logical battleground in a war for "hearts and minds." Every new gimmick or quick solution to the war was tried there, starting in 1962 with the disastrous Strategic Hamlet Program, which separated the peasants from important sources of spiritual strength: their homes and the graves of their ancestors. In 1965, Quang Ngai was the target of Operation Starlight, the first major American offensive. The war dragged on and casualties mounted, but Viet Cong strength remained stubbornly high, leading t tactics of frustration. Heavy aerial and artillery bombardments ripped at suspected enemy concentrations and hamlets. Much of the fire was simply blind, aimed at whoever might be in the area. The U. S. employed foreign mercenaries; in fact, some of the most highly paid in the history of warfare, South Korean marines, who treated the civilians of Quang Ngai with the contempt not only of hired soldiers but also of an ethnic group that feels superior to other Asians. The CIA tried to "solve" the Viet Cong problem in the province had failed, American infantrymen who fought the battles and suffered the casualties took the course that futility seemed to dictate as necessary: They assumed everyone who was not them was against them.

In spite of the fact that Song My sheltered the largest single concentration of enemy troops in Quang Ngai Province, very little of the actual ground war touched the village until the Americans arrived in early 1968. It was headquartere for the Viet Cong 48th Local Forces Battalion, an elusive unit that had inflicted heavy casualties on both Americans and South Vietnamese. C-21 Sapper Company, a nomadic unit that called song My its home, and a coastal surveillance company complemented the 48th. In addition, C-95 and 506A and 506B Local Forces companies occasionally used the Song My area for concealment. American military intelligence estimated the total Viet Cong strength in the Song My area in November 1967 at no more than 450 men. Of that total, approximately 70 percent were armed. No North Vietnamese regulars were in the area at that time.

In addition to the Local Forces elements, each of Song My's hamlets had poorly equipped and trained viet Cong self-defense guerrilla forces. These troops were foragers; their primary responsibility was keeping the 48th Battalion supplied. The 48th sometimes called on the self-defense guerrillas as combat replacements. This practice gave the 48th a (continued on page 184)Anatomy of a Massacre(continued from page 139) ready manpower pool and linked the peasants closely with their fighting men

Although Song My had an elected Viet Cong government that had been functioning quietly and efficiently for more than 25 years, the de facto leader of Song My was Nguyen Tram, commander of the 48th Battalion. Tram, a professional soldier in his early 40s, had disatiguished himself in battle and endeared himself to the peasants of Song My. A native of Song My, he had gone to North Vietnam in 1954 for schooling and had returned in 1959. Back in the south, he refined his military education by occasionally heading up Viet Cong province-wide military seminars. Tram understood political warfare; and under his leadership, the 48th spent more time working with the villagers than fighting "free-world" forces. For this reason, his unit's location was never betrayed by casual informers--a remarkable record in a country where information is treated as a commodity to be bought and sold.

On December 2, 1967, Tram led his men in an overwhelming military victory: the total destruction of the Binh Son District Headquarters, a redoubt located some 15 miles northwest of Song My. A prisoner of war from the C-21Sapper Company described to me the forced march by the 48th that rainy winter night--reporting that peasants in each hamlet through which Tram's men passed stood by the trail, offering the troops flowers, food and wishes of great victory. Marching his men through that area at dusk, in battle formation, was a calculated psychological ploy on Tram's part. The hamlets and villages were believed, by Americans, at least, to be shot through with government informers; yet no one gave any advance warning of the raid. Tram suffered no compromise even in the hamlets far from Song My and close to the Binh Son District Headquarters--hamlets rated under 100 percent South Vietnamese government control by the American Hamlet Evaluation Reports.

Since the 48th Battalion was allowed to conduct operations undisturbed, its success was a function of its own ability and the indifferent performance of the allied force responsible for the general Song My area: the First Republic of Korea (ROK) marine brigade. Quang Ngai province, like other areas in South Vietnam, was split into Tactical Areas of Responsibility (TAORs), with boundaries every bit as inviolable to other allied forces as an armed blockade. Although one allied force could grant special compensations allowing another to operate in its TAOR, the ROKs refused Americans permission to operate in or around theirs.

The ROKs presented a glittering façade to the working press, but they seldom conducted offensive penetration before in their lives--from both American-supplemented salaries and extensive black-market activites--the ROKs refused to risk it all on something so unlucrative as a military operation. The American Government paid the Koreans large sum to act essentially as a garrison force.

The First ROK marines were both the joke and the scourge of American soldiers in the province--ludicrous in their smiling refusal to finish a known enemy force at their back door but dangerous by allowing that Viet Congforce to stage unhampered attacks on American and South Vietnamese installations.

After the Binh son raid on December second, Tram quickly pulled his battalion back inside the ROK TAOR, with the U.S. Americal Division (made up of random units collected in Vietnam) in hot pursuit. The ROKs not only refused to allow the Americans to continue the chase, they also refused to act themselves. A Korean intelligence officer said only that he would look into the matter. He never did. Also, while the Binh Son attack was still in progress, the ROKs were asked to send a relief column to break the siege. They complied but took an astounding five hours to cover the six-mile journey and, as they expected, arrived well after the fight had ended. The ROKs, as a Quang Ngai Province advisor euphemistically put it, had a dangerous habit of "sitting on their fire bases."

But the Koreans did stage close, defensive patrolling regularly, since they knew there was nowhere to go if they were attacked by the Viet Cong. In the wake of these operations, the Vietnamese were united in their vehement dislike of the koreans. During one defensive patrol, the Koreans took light sniper fire from a hamlet close to Highway One--a common occurence. In retaliation, the ROK patrol leader picked a family at random and had the mother and her eight children beheaded. Unhappily, the husband was away, serving with the South Vietnamese army at the province capital. He subsequently went insane.

In a late-1967 operation--the Americans were surprised that it was conducted at all--the ROKs swept into the Song My--Cape Batangan area. After that short maneuver, the ROKs reported a body count of more than 700 Viet Cong troops and fewer than 20 causalties of their own.

When I talked with a ROK intelligence officer to determine what Viet Cong units the Koreans had destroyed, he assured me--indeed, insisted--that the ROKs had encountered neither the 48th Battalion nor any Local Forces companies operating in that area. Even if the 48th and all the Local Forces companies had been included in that boyd count, the ROKs would have killed all the Viet Cong in the Song My area twice. When I asked him what the Koreans had killed and called Viet Cong, he smiled. Beforewalking away, however, he stopped and reminded me that there is no such thing in Vietnam as an innocent civilian.

The Koreans had committed the first Song My massacre, and it left a legacy of hate for the incoming Americans of Task Force Barker. Not only had the ROKs conducted a staggering slaughter of civilians to cap their long-standing policy of brutality in the Song My area, they had also psychologically prepared the area for March 16. A third-world force in Vietnam, the Koreans will never be called to account for their actions. The Americans of Task Force Barker, who walked into the morass in Song My, will--and have been.

Not long after Tram and the Viet Cong 48th Battalion overran the Binh Son District Headquarters. Major James Willoughby, one of the few survivors, visited a small hamlet just inside the ROKTAOR. To his amazement, he found cigarettes, soap, radios, even small refrigerators inside one of the thatched houses. The items, all from American PXs, had been funneled to the hamlet through the Korean black market. Willoghby confiscated the entire lot. Shortly after returnng to his headquarters, he received word that the First ROK marine brigade commander wanted to see him. Willoughby went to the ROK compound south of Binh Son. Where he was received by the brigade provost marshal, who told him to stay out of the ROKTAOR--or else. When Willoughby refused, he was beaten by two Korean Privates.

Shortly after this incident, the ROKs were transferred from the Batangan complex to an area near the big U.S. base at Danang Since the summer of 1967, "unofficial complaints" against the ROKs had been filed from Quang Ngai. To those of uss on the Quang Ngai advisory teaam--disgusted with their vehement refussal to stage offensive operations, alarmed by the Vietnamese hostility toward them and concerned about lowlevel agent reports that they were selling ammunition to the Viet Cong--there could have been no better news thaan that of the ROKs' imminent departure. By virtue of the beating Willoughby took, he may have sealed the Korean relocation.

The ROKs started phasing out in December 1967. The process took approximately 30 dayss and, during that time. the Song My-Cape Batangan complex escaped any allied penetration. Tram built the 48th Battalion back up to strenght and resolidified its peasant support. He pointed to the ROK marines to dramatize the Viet Cong caase against the allied forces. The villagers of Song My and Cape Batangan who had suffered at Korean hands were a responsive audience,

With the Koreaans finally gone, new TAORs were drawn up. Not wanting any part of Cape Batangan, the South Vietnamese left it to the U.S. Americal Division; but, in turn, the ARVN took responsbility for Song my village.

In mid-Januaaary 1968--shortly before the devastating Tet offensive--a multibattalion ARVN and Regional Forces/Popular Forces operation was launched in the Song My area. The maneuver was scheduled to go to but not through My Lai number one, the eastermost hamlet in the village. The ARVN, after all, was not particularly eager for contact

On this operation, ARVN took 55 casualties, only two of which were gunshot wounds. The remainder came from mines and booby traps. It was one of those discouraging operations in which 100 yards could not be covered before a dull rumble, a glay-black cloud of dirty smoke and a piercing scream announced the triggering of another explosive device . The ARVN gave up far short of its intended objectives.

The Vietnamese had not operated in the area for so long that they had forgotten how dangerous Song My was. The Viet Cong had booby-trapped the village so completely, it had become a fortress. They had placed to warn the Song My villagers of danger, but the peasants were less than enthusiastic in caautioning allied troops

This was ARVN's only offensive in the area until well after March 16. The ARVN operation defeated, Nguyen Tram perpared for his role in the Tet offensive. The ARVN operation in January had not cost him a single man and his losses to the constant artillery fire were negligible. His unit, just as prior to the December Binh Son attack, was well supplied and up to battle strength.

The 48th had a key role in the 1968 Tet offensive. Under Tram's leadersship, the battalion--reinforced by three Local Forces compaines--attacked and secured the northernmost area of Quang Ngai City, the Province capital.

On February first, the second day of the offensive, Tram made an uncharacteristic move. Insted of pulling back to the anonymity of the peasant masses--his unit's concealment during the day-light hours--he chose to slug. He had obviously been given an order to after oerrunning his assigned objective, as he normally would have done.

Although Tram's troops occupied high ground, their primitive weapons were no match for American jets and helicopter gunships. In a four-hour battle, the Fourth Battalion of the Fourth ARVN Regiment retook the Viet Cong positions and killed Tram. The ARVN unit, which a month before had broken and run from a poorly armed Viet Cong platoon, symbolized its military resurgence by tying Tram's body behind a jeep and dragging it through the dust, dismembering it beyond recognition.

Without Tram, the 48th Battalion lost hope and heart. In an extraordinary move, survivors of the 48th abandoned their cover, laid down their weapons and started dragging their dead and wounded back toward Song My. In the brilliant late-morning sunlight, they took a trail they had traveled many times but never as a recognizable military unit. Unafraid to show their strenght before the successful assault on Binh Son, they were equally prepared to display their wounds in retreat that February morning.

American observation helicopters and "bird dog" spotter aorcraft quickly picked up the movement and reported it to headquarters at Quang Ngai City. The observers' description was dear enough: a defeated, demoralized element with many wounded offering no resistance; in effect, a hospital train. Although advised by Americans to have South Vietnamese troops merely round up the defeated elements, LIeutenant Colonel (now Colonel) Thon That Khien, the air. American helicopter gunships struck, slaughtering the Viet Cong, as one aviator later described it, "like hogs."

The 48th Battalion was reduced in strengh from 266 to approximaatey 35 man. Nguyen Tram, Song My's inspired leader, was dead. For the first time in as long as any observer could remember, the Song My complex was defenseless. Psychologically, the villagers of Song My were staggered; they had suffered first the Korean massacre and then the Tet losses, both tragedies of far greater magnitude than the cumualtive effect by jets and artillery

Trying only to stay alive (any type of offensive operation was out of the question), the Viet Cong of the 48th turned to their wits. Knowing the allied TAORs every bit as well as the allies themselves, the Viet Cong carfully remained inside the ARVN's area for protection. Stunned by the fury of the Tet offensive, the local ARVN units withdrew all the way to Quang Ngai City--the pattern for the ARVN during that period of the war. In the absence of allied offensive pressure, the 48th began putting th pieces together once more.

• • •

While the 48th struggled to rebuild and to continue a remarkable military record, the U.S. 11th Light Infantry Brigade was attempting to get some kind of military record going. A latecomer, almost an afterthought to the Vietnam war, the 11th arrived at Qui Nhon on December 22, 1967, from Hawaii--at the same time Korean marines were conduction the 11th moved north by truck to Duc pho Combat Base, where it established a lackuster combat Base, where it established a lackluster combat record--not because of any physical shortcomings on the part of the unit; there simply were'nt enough Viet Cong left in Due Pho to justify the hunt.

When the U. S. America Division, the 11th's parent organization, took over the responsibility for the ROK TAOR, a new opportunity was presented the "Jungle Warriors," the nickname the 11th had inauspiciously assumed. After the funy of Tet had subsided, Americal staged its first operation into Song My, claming the Viet Cong had linked a full battalion in the village and its surrounding area. Americal correctly noted that the entire village complex was linked by trenches, tunnels and fortified positions, but the battalion it was chasing was a ghost.

Americal assigned pursuit of the phantom to a bastard unit, Task Force Barker, a conglomerate of the best company from each battalion of the 11th Light Infantry Brigade. It was named for Lieutenant Colonel Frank Barker, the unit's commander, and it operated from Landing Zone (LZ) Dotti, named for his wife. Barker was specially picked for the command, as he later would be picked to head his own battalion. By mid-February, Barker's task force was working regularly in the old Korean TAOR and occasionally south into the Song My village complex. To the Koreans, TAOR boundries had been fortified lines, but to the ARVN still cowering in Quang Ngai City, Task Force Barker could have as much as it wanted.

Although ARVN had the responsibility for Song My, the Americans asked for and received permission to operate in the area. Since Americal officers believed the Viet Cong were in Song My, they wanted to go there. At first, Task Force Barker asked for permission to operate in the ARVN TAOR within narrow times limits, outlining for the Vietnamese the plans for American operations. This, however, was unacceptable. Since Quang Ngai Province Headquarters was saturated with Viet Cong informers, it was hardly the place to air one's offensive strategy. In fact, plans of future operations were often transmitted faster to the Viet Cong than to allies at the province capital.

As a result, Lieutenant Colonel Barker took the course he would use for the operation of March 16. Instead of requesting a specific time limit, he asked for clearance to operate over a wide time latitude and made no mention of operational tactics. When the Vietnamese grant this kind of latitude, they relinquish any control of fire in the zone--making it, in effect, a "free-fire" zone. In a normal engagement, when no such agreement has been reached, Americans are obliged to obtain "political clearance" from either the district or ther province chief before firing into an area.

Theoretically, once political clearence has been granted, the area comes under American rules of engagement. A more liberally accepted interpretation, however--and one the ARVN itself seems to employ--is that political clearence is carte-blanche authority to fire in the area. A free-fire zone condemns anything that moves under its own locomotion--men, women, children, water buffalo--as Viet Cong and, therefore, fair targets. "As soon as the Viets said we could shoot 'em up, we went right ahead. After all, they they're talkin' about their own people and they ought to know," one Americal officer told me.

As with the unofficial American policy of turning prisoners of war over to the South Vietnamese for questioning, Americans practice the strange habit of insisting that the South Vietnamese set standards of American military fire discipline. Letting South Vietnamese stage brutal interrogations leaves American hands clean; acquiring South Vietnamese political clearance before firing into a halmlet leaves American consciences clean.

This policy was hardly compatible with the announced effort to win the "hearts and minds" of the people; so, in its early Song My operations, Task Force Barker was frustrated by the civilian population. The peasants had experienced virtually no contact with Americans but believed everything they had heard; they could not forget the American artillery fire. One Americal intelligence officer noted that more tons of ordnance had been dropped on the Song My--Cape Batangan complex than had been used to shatter German defenses at Normandy in World War Two. Thus, most families had already suffered at the hands of Americans before the troops from Americal arrived.

While the peasants did not display hostility openly, their indifference was an effective and provocative weapon. Many American platoon leaders reported passing through a group of peasants who watched quietly as a U.S. soldier stepped on a land mine. No attempt was made to warn Americans of such destructive devices, and their effects were witnessed only by emotionless, disinterested Oriental faces.

So Americal faced in Song My the "nickel-dime" war of attrition in its most brutalizing form. Withou making any significant contact, Task Force Barker took casualty after casualty from mines and body traps [see Step Lightly, by Tim O'Brien, page 138--Ed.]. A mine is a neutral device; after suffering its effects, a man has nothing to shoot back at, no enemy to attack. In Song My, there was only the emptiness of the coastal spring.

The Task Force Barker soldiers became vengeful; they saw their buddies' deaths as confirmation of their feelingg that all the peasants were not only "gooks" but Veit Cong "gooks" as well. Of course, the peasants were Viet Cong; they had been under Viet Cong control for over a generation and had sons, husbands and fathers serving as Viet Cong soldiers. But the American establishment had convinced its troops that no such thing as an independent, indigenous Viet Cong estate existed. And the GIs of Task Forcee Barker, only freshly arrived in the country, excepted to be received by peasants who were at least neutral. That these innocents looked on them as colonialists and reacted to their presence by concealing and planting mines was incomprehensible.

• • •

Since its formation, Task Force Barker had been confronted with a difficulty common to any new military unit operating in an unfamiliar area; lack of firm intelligence sources. Although a hasty effort had been made by Task Force to form a reliable intelligence collection service in the area, it was simply too young. Barker intelligence was shocked to learn that its estimates did'nt coincide with those of the American military-intelligence team at Quang Ngai City. When Americal officers arrived there early in March to plan the fatal assault, we, the province team, gave them the information that had been accumulated through an efficient collection effort in the Song My area.

At this final preoperation liaison in Quang Ngai City, Task Force Barker was informed of the progress of the 48th Battalion and its recent activities. For almost three weeks after Tet, what remained of the 48th had lingered in the Song My area. But with its entire command staff dead and the area harassed by Task Force Barker operations, rebuilding was impossible. Therefore, the 48th had moved almost 20 miles west. Task Force Barker never realized it was gone.

Americal and our province team formed different evalutions of the enemy situation in Quang Ngai Province, because each operated under its own set of strategies and policies. Province advisors are a throwback from earlier, optimistic days, when the U.S. was limited to advising and assisting the South Vietnamese in their war. Advisors ideally become Vietnamese--familier with the country through close relationships with their Vietnamese counterparts. The ideal advisors eats the local food, speaks the language, knows the people, understands the problems and unselfishly devotes himself to the welfare and well-being of the people; his military zeal is tempered by his thorough understanding of the local suituation--a sort of Renaissance warrior in the rice-roots battle. Of course, it never really worked that way; many advisors were inadequately trained or psychologically unfit for this demanding job, and Vietnamese cooperation in the absence of any enforement machinery was random and almost whimsical.

When the advisor system, Special Forces tactics, interdictory bombing and other quick and easy solutions failed to carry the field and the Viet Cong looked dangerously close to winning on the battlefield, large American combat units were committed. An infantry division incorporates none of the subtlety the advisor units are supposed to employ. It is an civic programs it conducts are after thoughts. In combat outfits such as the Americal Division, everything is phrased in the stark argot of warfare: casualties, objectives, enemies and, in Vietnam, body counts. The solution in Vietnam to the old battle problem of inflicting maximum damage on the enemy at least expense to your own unit can be expressed, as the late Bernard Fall pointed out, in one word: firepower. The practice of big units in Vietnam is simply to overwhelm the enemy with destruction. Where the advisor system would, in theory, use some sort of vage unified approach to any situation, employing direct military action only when absolutely necessary, the first recourse of the American combat unit is fire--a myopia that makes any kind of solution in Vietnam, short of Genocide, impossible.

After the American combat troops arrived in March of 1965, the advisor system was reduced to an impotent secondary effort both in sources and priorities. We still had an advisory team in Quang Ngai Province, but we had no reliable forces. We could only pass on our judgment and appraisal of the situation--based on our day-to-day experience within nthe province--to Americal.

But the task force operated on its own purely military assumptions and premises, so it failed to understand the composition of the Viet Cong 48th. On its sweep operations, Task Force Barker picked up occasional documents from the 48th and, in one instance, captured a prisoner from the battalion. Since the unit was thoroughly integrated into the life of Song My village, it would have been almost impossible for any conscientious search not to turn up remnants of the battalions's presence. Instead of taking this material as mere evidence of the 48th's long association with Song My, Task Force Barker preferred to use it as proof that the unit was physically in the village.

An advance cadre from the 48th had returned to the Song My area on opproximately March tenth. This group, no larger then 30 in number, had the responsibility of recuiting even more troops. The Local Forces companies in the area--already understrength themselves--each gave up a platoon to the 48th.

Those few cadremen back in Song My from the 48th had left the village and moved some eight miles north into Binh Son for further recruiting. This information was provided to Task Force Barker no more than 36 hours in advance of the March 16 operation. On the day, the most notable consideration about the 48th Battalion was its absence from its old home of Song My. The Quang Ngai intelligence team told Task Force Barker all this and more.

The Quang Ngai intelligence team also informed Task Force Barker of what it would find in that area: a few disorganized North Vietnamese stragglers who had remained since the Tet offensive and a skeleton collection of hamlet guerrillas. That task force might catch there one of the understrength Local Forces companies--no more than 50 men--but it would not find the Viet Cong 48th Local Forces Battalion. After receiving this information, Task Force Barker liaison elements made another stop to gather information for the impending operation. This was at the Central Intelligence Agency compound in Quang Ngai City.

A CIA operative, who went under a code name, commanded this operation. He himself was a former Army man who had only recently joined the agency; this was his first assignment. He arrived long on enthusiasm and enrgy but woefully short on judgment. His intelligence estimates were so ludicrous that he was ignored by serious intelligence officers in the province. But if anybody could pull a snow job, it was this operative. Shortly after his arrival, even the experienced military-intelligence team at Quang Ngai City was sucked in by his bubbling confidence. Based on CIA information, a Special Forces team was sent to reconnoiter a supposed Viet Cong industrial-hospital complex. THe only thing it found was an ambush.

The CIA operative liked to think big, and it showed in his intelligence estmates. He estimated the 48th Battalion at a strength of 450 men--the figure Task Force Barker foolishly chose to believe. He could produce report after report to reinforce his statements, but there was a reason for that. Just as he thought big, so, too, did he pay big for information. Indeed, he was known to pay as much for a single, unconfirmed piece of information as the military-intelligence team paid its entire agent net in a month. The Vietnamese agents--who were not as financially ignorant as the operative thought them to be--quickly recognized that he paid well for overblown reports. They responded with the big reports. The agents ended up wealthy and the operative, happy.

Task Force Barker dispatched Captain Eugene Kotouc--now charged with murder and maintanning of Viet Cong suspexts in connection with the massacre--to talk to the operative. Clearly, Kotouc fell under the CIA charisma and bought the bogus intelligence without question--even though every experienced intelligence agency in the province, including Kotouc's parent intelligence unit at the Americal Division headquarters, provided estimates of the enemy situation in sharp contrast to the fiction conjured up by the CIA.

But there was something else Kotouc picked up on his unfortunate CIA visit: the black list drawn up for the My Laihamlets. The CIA coordinated what was known as Operation Phoenix--the systematic elimination of known Viet Cong hamlet and village cadres and supporters.

The black list is the heart of the Phoenix program. For My Lai, it contained the names of as many as two thirds of the entire hamlet peopulation. It listed people who held positions in the Viet Cong military-political complex, from secret and semisecret hamlet guerrillas to chairmen of Viet Cong farmers' organizations. The black list did not overlook children, documenting members of such groups as the Viet Cong young girls' alliance and the Viet Cong equivalent of the boy scouts. Those on the CIA-phoenix black list were tabbed for systematic elimination. To the CIA, execution was definitely an acceptable means of systematic elimination.

Kotouc was given a copy of the black list for My Lai. He had it with him on the operation of March 16. In effect, Company C was doing no more and no less than following CIA directives by putting the inhabitants of My Lai to the wall. The victims already were doomed men, women children, by virtue of their CIA indentification. First Lieutenant William Calley, Jr.--charged with the murder of 102 civilians in My Lai--and his men may be guilty of being unauthorized executioners, but not of carrying out an unauthorized execution.

Several months after the massacre, the CIA operatives in Quang Ngai received praise from Saigon for Operation Phoenix, for the manner in which they had eliminated the Viet Cong "infrastructure." Among those persons reported by the CIA as eliminated from Viet Cong ranks were the victims of the massacre. While the CIA operative received a gold star for the slaughter, Calley stands to receive a rope.

Indisputably, Lieutenant Colonel Barker was spoon-fed the CIA estimate of the area. The Peers Commission indicated that the issued a curious set of directives when he called in his company commanders to issue a warning order for the March 16 heliborne assalt. His intelligence estimate stated the presence of the 48th Battalion in the area with a strength of up to 450 men. There had not been 450 men in the 48th in three years.

Barker further told his company commanders that there would be no women and children in Song My when his elements hit on March 16. Captain Ernest L. Medina (commander of the unit assigned to assault My Lai number four) confirmed this in a news conference. The Peers Commission said flatly that this inaccurate information came from Barker himself--that he promised his officers that the peasants would be marketing either in Son Tinth or in Quang Ngai City. This, in itself, was a blatant misunderstanding of the area, so erroneous it is incredible that even the CIA could have made such an assurance or that even Kotouc would have bought it.

There are many methods of giving orders in the Army. Obviously, the direct order, either oral or written, is binding and clear. Far more dangerous is the one implied by a commander and expected to be inferred by his subordinates. Certainlky, Barker did not gather his staff and company commanders and state flatly that they were to kill every man, woman and chilod in the hamlet. Rather, he left the nefarious implication that the only persons to be encountered would be Viet Cong. How Medina interpreted the implication can be seen in the briefing he gave his own company before the operation.

Medina could not have received the news of a vacant village without reservations. He had operated in that area and was familiar with the habits of the people. The traditional marked places for the villages of Song My were neither in Son Tinh, the district capital, not in Quang Ngai City, as Barker had told him. The villagers went either to My Lai number-one hamlet or to Son Thanth village to do their trading. But, the very idea of a mass morning exodus for marketing should have been laughed at by Medina.

How readily he would laugh at the idea of a 450-man battalion is another question. Without a decisive kill to their credit, the "Jungle Warriors" were distinguishing themselves only by stumbling through the mustric world of body count. In 1968, a low body count or kill ratio was an embarrassing statistic that did little to gain favour at higher headquarters. Commanders, especially those who had enthusiasm and ambition, could not disregard the emphasis placed on this official index of success. Lieutenant Colonel Barker was no exception.

Before arriving in Vietnam, Barker had been persuaded by high-ranking officers to take a Regular Army commission instead of the Reserve commission he held. He was assured, at that time, that bigger things were in his future--if, of course, he did well in Vietnam. The 48th Battalion was his obsession--so much so that on the very morning of the massacre, he was heard to announce, "I'd give anything to get the 48th." (Eventually, he gave everything. On an operation directed against the 48th in the same area three months later, his command helicopter collided with an Air Force observation plane. The helicopter exploded, killing Barker and his staff.)

A rugged man, Brker left an air of intensity wherever he went; he was a professional: meticulous, energetic and fearless. A few days before the massacre, he had ordered his command helicopterdown in the face oif enemy fire to pick up a soldier who had become separated from his unit and faced certain death. Barker followed the progress of his troops so closely, he could often be heard cutting in on the radio to give on-the-spot advice to a pinned-down company or platoon. Of those directly involved in the massacre, Barker was an ambiguous witness forever silenced. What Company C did that morning was done under his responsibility.

Barker ran the entire March 16 operation from a helicopter command post and, though it is not impossible that he missed the massacre from the air that morning, it is highly unlikely. He was too thorough a man--a virture that, ironically, condemns him in death. Relying on a faulty intelligence estimate, filled with an understandable desire to destroy the 48th and angered by the losses his taskk force had taken from mines and booby traps, Barker probably watched the destruction of the 48th's home village.

His intelligence officers had told him the task force would hit the 48th because they knew what he wanted to hear. It's an old game and one not necessarily limited to the Vietnam war: ambitious subordinates trying to please a commander. In this instance, it was costly.

Upon receipt of the same bogus intelligence, Caption Medina began keying his troops for battle. In a preoperation briefing, he told his men--who had not yet faced a large enemy force--that this assault would be "the big one."

In November 1969 interview, former Pfc. Charles Gruver of Tulsa denied that there was any subtlety at all involved in Mediana's words on the everning of March 15. "Our captain gave us a briefing the night before. He said everything was to be killed--that it was all V.C.," Gruver recalled.

But that was Gruver's inference of what Medina had said. The Peers Commissiion said in a news release that Median stressed only the revenge factor in his operational briefing, reminding the men of losses they had taken in the hamlet chain. Medina, like his commander, dropped ideas and suggestions. For Company C, that was enough; the briefing was decisive.

As preparation for the operation, artillery was directed against the targeted hamlets, indifferently pounding at an enemy force long gone from Song My. When the helicopters landed at approximately 7.30 A.M., light sniper fire steeled the troops' conviction that they were setting down in the midst of the 48th. But sporadic sniper fire from hamlet guerrillas and a few persons running from landing zone are commonplace in helicopter assaults. Captain Medina's description of the landing zone as "hot" was an overstatement. But it was hot enough for his troops; psychologically prepared to battle for their lives, they moved out from the LZ and began a cordon and search of My Lai number-four hamlet.

The reaction of the peasants in My Lai number four was predictable. Even when they concealed no troops in their hamlets, Song My villagers could noit act innocently; they had suffered too much and too long at the hands of the Koreans to stand around. They came streaming out of the hamlet towards the Regional Forces/Popular Forces Son Thanh outpost and My Khe hamlet to the south.

Eyewitness told NBC News that a number of children were killed attempting to get away from Song My. They ran head on into an American Platoon set up in a blocking position--itchy, ready for combat and ill-informed. Nobody had bothered to tell them that what was occurring was the pattern around Song My. The Americans just happened to be standing squarely on the traditional escape hatch.

"An old saying among Americans in Vietnam is that a running Vietnamese is a Viet Cong," war correspondent Charles Black has observed. Black, who followed American troops from the DMZ to the Mekong Delta, has called the skittishness of the peasants in the Song My area "unlike anything I have ever seen anywhere in the country."

Few had an opportunity to run, however. The search led by Calley that day was lethally effective. The villagers, rounded up in small groups by Calley's platoon, showed little fear until the shooting started; they excepted nothing more than a screening.

Eighteen months later, Calley was charged with murdering 109 "Oriental human beings." The Army reduced the count to 102 in February 1970 and charged several of Calley's men with other murders and atrocities, including rape. No one knows exactly how many were killed that morning; eyewitness observers put the number from 75 to 370. Intelligence sources in Quang Ngai City received reports of at least 500 peasants killed.

The most condemning piece of evidence against the now-defunct Task Force Barker is its own large body count--the result it desired most from the My Lai assault. The initial report for the operation claimed 128 Viet Cong killed in the operation and no weapons captured. That figure was later raised to three rifles.

When we received the after-action report at Quang Ngai City, we simply could not believe the count: There were'nt 128 Viet Cong troops in the village to be killed that day and it would have been imposible for that many Viet Cong to have been killed with so few weapons taken. In mountainous areas where a valley separated one force from another, Americans could count bodies across the valley floor but could not retrieve weapons, because of the danger of negotiating the terrain. But in the flat, uninhibiting area of Song My, there was no excuse.

Although there was speculation that civilians had gotten in the way, nobody made much of it. The more accepted conclusion was that Task Force Barker had inflated its body count for good press coverage--a practice relatively common in Vietnam and one that grew in inverse proportion to the number of Viet Cong combat troops present.

On the everning of March 16, the Americal intelligence section at Due Pho--a unit in no way responsible for the erroneous information given Task Force Barker prior to the operation--was suffering misgivings. Captain Albert Labriolla, the order-of-battle officer at Duc Pho, recalls one of his sergeants' calling LZ Dotti for an explanantion. Taskk Force Barker told him, "We were pursuing the enemy; they doubled back and picked up their own weapons, leaving the corpses." The cover-up for the massacre had begun; if Lieutenant Colonel Barker's intelligence failed the unit before the operation, it was prepared to fail neither him nor Medium in its aftermath.

In two days, low-level agent reports of the massacre began filtering back to military intelligence in Quang Ngai City. Task Force Barker was claiming it had caught and killed 128 Viet Cong from the 48th Battalion, while agents reporting to the military-intelligence team in Quang Ngai swore the 48th was not even in the area. But all the reports based on agent acounts began, "The Viet Cong report ..." thus causing first stories of the massacre to go unheeded.

Colonel Khien, the province chief, said in a press release in Novemeber 1969 that he had consulted with his U.S. counterpart and ordered an immediate investigation. That is not true. James May, his counterpart, a systematic man, never turned to military intelligence for assistance in the aftermath of the massacre, as was his invariable practice in matters demanding clandestine, in-depth investigation. An inquiry, even a question, about the agent reports back into focus. (Indeed, Khien even failed to remember in his statement that May was still his counterpart. He instead said he consulted with Edward Dillery, who did not assume his duties in Quang Ngai until long after the alleged investigation would have taken place.)

Khien has reason to avoid oftending the Americans. Before being promoted to Quang Ngai Province chief, he had been the subject of two lengthy investigations concerning illegal activities in the buying and selling of materiel and influence. The dossiers of both investigations were destroyed in the name of good allied relations. But to say Khien was promoted to province chief is an overstatement. The fact--as documented by now-destroyed military-intelligence files--is that he bought his way into the position, using his former position as chief of staff for the Second Arvn Division.

Khien's complete indifference to--indeed, his disdain for--the condition of the peasants in his province was a matter of record in Quang Ngai. That he would ignore a massacre of his own people--though he had ample acces to many of those same agent reports that confounded the military-intelligence team--is simply predictable. He did not want his highly lucrative financial operations sidetracked.

Discreet inquirie about the body count were made to U.S. Americal Division by the advisory team in Quang Ngai City. But since there was no official pressure behind the inquiries, they were made only in general conversation. Americal intelligence officers visiting the advisory team admitted that they, too, were curious about the body count.

Months later, I was informed by an Americal intelligence officer at Chu Lai that rumors of a massacre were rampant in his headquarters, but he mentioned no specific names or places. Even in Vietnam, the dismal truth was almost revealed but not quite. The details of that aday at My Lai were sealed within the depths of Americal.

It can honestly be said that those who were expected to be in the Know--those serving in intelligence--never Knew exactly what had happened at My Lai and the surrounding hamlet chain. We had our ideas, but there are a great many ways to kill large numbers of innocent people. The most drastic supposition ever offered was that a large number of peasants had been killed by artillery fire We were never able to imagine a massacre, despite everything we had seen come and go in Quang Ngai Province.

Nixon Administration public relations has been attempting to create a specific impression about the massacre. Preparing to admit that it occurred, Administration spokesmen have frantically insisted that the incident was merely an isolated act. But calley and, to a lesser degree, the others will become scapegoats not for a general officer but for a general war policy. Attempts will be made to paint that wretched licutenant as a mad-dog killer; certainly, his psychological balance will be questioned. Calley is and will continue to be contrasted with the candy-giving, head-patting, smiling-faced boys whom Americans desperately insistare fighting the Vietnam war. But American, like Korean, brutality had long been a matter of record in Quang Ngai.

That is, in fact, what the massacre is truly all about--it was a way of life. And this is what the Nixon Administration must sweep under the rug of public relations if it is to continue its policies in Vietnam.

There is one more ugly souvenir of March 16, 1968. Upon being informed of the results of the operation in Song My that day, General William C. Westmoreland reacted quickly. He could not have read the statistics saying 128 Viet Cong had been killed and only three weapons captured without some second thoughts. But Task Force Barker had played the game of body count well and, after all, it was Westmoreland who had put the first place. So he fired off a congratulatory message to the task force for its action on March 16--for the My Lai massacre.