I called the current version "more of less correct" because it still mixes older and newer sources and the result is some confusion.
Originally, Wikipedia just quoted this article by Heather Wokusch:
A few years later, Colin Powell was an up-and-coming staff officer, assigned to the Americal headquarters at Chu Lai, Vietnam. He was put in charge of handling a young soldier, Tom Glen, who had written a letter accusing the Americal division of routine brutality against Vietnamese civilians;
the letter was detailed, its allegations horrifying, and its contents echoed complaints received from other soldiers. Rather than speaking to Glen about the letter, however, Powell's response was to conduct a cursory investigation followed by a report faulting Glen, and concluding, "In direct refutation of this (Glen's) portrayal, is the fact that relations between Americal soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent."
http://www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/article/id2584/pg1/index.htmlThe article was later edited, but parts of it remain, e.g. "the letter was detailed, its allegations horrifying, and its contents echoed complaints received from other soldiers".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_massacreThere are many inaccuracies in the original article. The letter doesn't mention any names, dates or places, so it wasn't "detailed" in that sense. Powell didn't speak to Glen, but he had to respond within 72 hours and Glen was already back in the States.
The following article by Richard Harwood gives a good summary of the "case" ("Damned If You Don't; Colin Powell's supposed sins of omission":
(Powell) was a young major at the time assigned to the division's headquarters as an assistant on the G-3 staff, which was responsible for planning the division's major military operations. Six months into the job Powell was handed a letter, written the previous month, by a specialist four, Tom Glen, an ammo carrier for a mortar platoon in the 3rd Infantry. Glen by then was back in the States. The letter was addressed to Gen. William C. Westmoreland and passed down to the division, where it landed in Powell's lap. He was instructed to check it out and respond within 72 hours.
The letter was an eloquent but generalized critique of American military practices in Vietnam — the brutalizing of civilians, torture and other mistreatment of prisoners by "soldiers that, apparently, fire indiscriminately into Vietnamese homes and without provocation or justification shoot at the people themselves. . . . What has been outlined here I have seen not only in my own unit, but also in others we have worked with, and I fear it is universal. If this is indeed the case, it is a problem that cannot be overlooked, but can through a more firm implementation of the codes of
and the Geneva Convention, perhaps be eradicated."
No names, dates or places were cited. (...) Lacking any specifics from Glen, Powell informed his superiors that, in Lane's words, "the young soldier's charges were false, except possibly, for isolated instances; abuses were not tolerated but punished."
Glen now lives in Centreville, Ind., and works with students needing remedial work to qualify for college admission. His own platoon in Vietnam, he told me, engaged in no atrocities or brutal treatment of civilians or prisoners, but he had personal knowledge of indiscriminate firing by other units and the use of dogs to intimidate prisoners in the course of their interrogations. He had been told by a helicopter door gunner soon after the My Lai massacre that something untoward had occurred in that village. But he didn't pursue it, report it to higher authorities or mention the incident in his letter to Westmoreland. Glen stands by his general observations but, with respect to Powell, is "concerned about this being blown out of proportion. . . . I don't see Powell involved, and shouldn't have drawn that conclusion."
(Washington Post, 10 April 1995)
Tom Glen's letter describes horrific behavior, but it doesn't describe or mention the massacre in My Lai:
"The average GI's attitude toward and treatment of the Vietnamese
people all too often is a complete denial of all our country is attempting
to accomplish in the realm of human relations... Far beyond merely
dismissing the Vietnamese as 'slopes' or 'gooks,' in both deed and thought,
too many American soldiers seem to discount their very humanity; and with
this attitude inflict upon the Vietnamese citizenry humiliations, both
psychological and physical, that can have only a debilitating effect upon
efforts to unify the people in loyalty to the Saigon government,
particularly when such acts are carried out at unit levels and thereby
acquire the aspect of sanctioned policy...
Vietnamese] for mere pleasure, fire indiscriminately into Vietnamese homes
and without provocation or justification shoot at the people themselves...
Fired with an emotionalism that belies unconscionable hatred, and armed with
a vocabulary consisting of 'You VC,' soldiers commonly 'interrogate' by
means of torture that has been presented as the particular habit of the
enemy. Severe beatings and torture at knife point are usual means of
questioning captives or of convincing a suspect that he is, indeed, a Viet
Cong... It would indeed be terrible to find it necessary to believe that an
American soldier that harbors such racial intolerance and disregard for
justice and human feeling is a prototype of all American national character;
yet the frequency of such soldiers lends credulity to such beliefs... What
has been outlined here I have seen not only in my own unit, but also in
others we have worked with, and I fear it is universal. If this is indeed
the case, it is a problem which cannot be overlooked, but can through a more
firm implementation of the codes of MACV (Military Assistance Command
Vietnam) and the Geneva Conventions, perhaps be eradicated."
http://www.vfpmaine.org/goff%20letter%20050604.htm
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