My Lai: Legacy of a massacre (BBC) {MUCH worse than we were told--records found last year}

[eppur_se_muova]

Media attention on Lt Calley's trial was extensive and the glare of publicity so bright it hid the wider, more awful truth.

Before that trial got under way, the United States army had, behind closed doors, completed an investigation of its own into the events at My Lai, and specifically into the possibility that those in authority had deliberately covered up a massacre.

Convened on 1 December 1969 in the basement of the Pentagon, The Department of the Army Review of the Preliminary Investigations into The My Lai Incident, known in abbreviated form as The Peers Inquiry, was chaired by Lt Gen William 'Ray' Peers.
***
In 1987, they were shipped to the US National Archives, as one small portion of a massive group of records of US Army activities in Vietnam.

There they remained hidden, never catalogued, never investigated, never uncovered - until last year.
***
MUCH more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7298533.stm

There is a BBC Radio 4 broadcast, available for the next 7 days, on this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/archivehour/pip/lqufd/

[PDJane]

1. And Seymour Hersh is still villified

for bringing this to public attention.

This is why, when Hersh says that this is the most brutal army ever fielded by the US, I wonder what awful things are being done there now....that we aren't hearing about.

[Jade Fox]

3. Yes, what will we be hearing about 30 years from now?

This era, this disastrous adventure in Iraq, will go down as the worst era in our national history.

The shame of it is almost unbearable.

[troubleinwinter]

2. Thank you. I listened to the entire BBC broadcast.

I listened because I am researching another historical massacre by Americans. I cannot hear the voices of the Americans involved in the massacre that I am researching, but was able to listen to the people on these tapes. It gave me a bit of insight.

Like the massacre I am studying, only one person was indicted and prosecuted for My Lai (Calley). Some 30 officers were believed to have warranted prosecution for My Lai. Certainly 30 people should have been indicted for the Mountain Meadows Massacre, but only one was prosecuted and executed for the massacre of 120 unarmed men, women and children.