SwiftVets.com

[Craig]

http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine.html

Fragging Bob:
Bob Kerrey, CIA War Crimes,
And The Need For A War Crimes Trial

by Douglas Valentine

By now everybody knows that former Senator Bob Kerrey led a seven-member
team of Navy Seals into Thanh Phong village in February 1969, and murdered
in cold blood more than a dozen women and children.

What hardly anyone knows, and what no one in the press is talking about
(although many of them know), is that Kerrey was on a CIA mission, and its
specific purpose was to kill those women and children. It was illegal,
premeditated mass murder and it was a war crime.

And it's time to hold the CIA responsible. It's time for a war crimes
tribunal to examine the CIA's illegal activities during and since the
Vietnam War.


War Crimes As Policy

War crimes were a central was part of a CIA strategy for fighting the
Vietnam War. The strategy was known as Contre Coup, and it was the
manifestation of a belief that the war was essentially political, not
military, in nature. The CIA theorized that it was being fought by opposing
ideological factions, each one amounting to about five percent of the total
population, while the remaining ninety percent was uncommitted and wanted
the war to go away.

According to the CIA's mythology, on one side were communist insurgents,
supported by comrades in Hanoi, Moscow and Peking. The communists fought for
land reform, to rid Vietnam of foreign intervention, and to unite the north
and south. The other faction was composed of capitalists, often Catholics
relocated from North Vietnam in 1954 by the CIA. This faction was fighting
to keep South Vietnam an independent nation, operating under the direction
of quiet Americans.

Caught in the crossfire was the silent majority. The object shared by both
factions was to win these undecided voters over to its side.

Contre Coup was the CIA's response to the realization that the Communists
were winning the war for the hearts and minds of the people. It also was a
response to the belief that they were winning through the use of
psychological warfare, specifically, selective terror ­ the murder and
mutilation of specific government officials.

In December 1963, Peer DeSilva arrived in Saigon as the CIA's station chief.
He claims to have been shocked by what he saw. In his autobiography,
SubRosa, DeSilva describes how the VC had "impaled a young boy, a village
chief, and his pregnant wife on sharp poles. To make sure this horrible
sight would remain with the villagers, one of the terror squad used his
machete to disembowel the woman, spilling he fetus onto the ground."

"The Vietcong," DeSilva said, "were monstrous in the application of torture
and murder to achieve the political and psychological impact they wanted."

But the methodology was successful and had tremendous intelligence
potential, so DeSilva authorized the creation of small "counter-terror
teams," designed "to bring danger and death to the Vietcong functionaries
themselves, especially in areas where they felt secure."


How Counter-Terror Worked In Vietnam

Thanh Phong village was one of those areas where Vietcong functionaries felt
secure. It was located in Kien Hoa Province, along the Mekong Delta. One of
Vietnam's most densely populated provinces, Kien Hoa was precariously close
to Saigon, and is criss-crossed with waterways and rice paddies. It was an
important rice production area for the insurgents as well as the Government
of Vietnam, and thus was one of the eight most heavily infiltrated provinces
in Vietnam. The estimated 4700 VC functionaries in Kien Hoa accounted for
more than five percent of the insurgency's total leadership. Operation
Speedy Express, a Ninth Infantry sweep through Kien Hoa in the first six
months of 1969, killed an estimated 11,000 civilians-supposedly VC
sympathizers.

These functionaries formed what the CIA called the Vietcong Infrastructure
(VCI). The VCI consisted of members of the People's Revolutionary Party, the
National Liberation Front, and other Communist outfits like the Women's and
Student's Liberation Associations. Its members were politicians and
administrators managing committees for business, communications, security,
intelligence, and military affairs. Among their main functions were the
collection of taxes, the recruitment of young men and women into the
insurgency, and the selective assassination of GVN officials.

As the CIA was well aware, Ho Chi Minh boasted that with two cadre in every
hamlet, he could win the war, no matter how many soldiers the Americans
threw at him.

So the CIA adopted the Ho's strategy-but on a grander and bloodier scale.
The object of Contre Coup was to identify and terrorize each and every
individual VCI and his/her family, friends and fellow villagers. To this end
the CIA in 1964 launched a massive intelligence operation called the
Provincial Interrogation Center Program. The CIA (employing the US company
Pacific Architects and Engineers) built an interrogation center in each of
South Vietnam's 44 provinces. Staffed by members of the brutal Special
Police, who ran extensive informant networks, and advised by CIA officers,
the purpose of the PICs was to identify, through the systematic
"interrogation" (read torture) of VCI suspects, the membership of the VCI at
every level of its organization; from its elusive headquarters somewhere
along the Cambodian border, through the region, city, province, district,
village and hamlet committees.

The "indispensable link" in the VCI was the District Party Secretary ­ the
same individual Bob Kerrey's Seal team was out to assassinate in its mission
in Thanh Phong.


Frankenstein's Monster

Initially the CIA had trouble finding people who were willing to murder and
mutilate, so the Agency's original "counter-terror teams" were composed of
ex-convicts, VC defectors, Chinese Nungs, Cambodians, Montagnards, and
mercenaries. In a February 1970 article written for True Magazine, titled
"The CIA's Hired Killers," Georgie-Anne Geyer compared "our boys" to "their
boys" with the qualification that, "Their boys did it for faith; our boys
did it for money."

The other big problem was security. The VC had infiltrated nearly every
facet of the GVN-even the CIA's unilateral counter-terror program. So in an
attempt to bring greater effectiveness to its secret war, the CIA started
employing Navy Seals, US Army Special Forces, Force Recon Marines, and other
highly trained Americans who, like Bob Kerrey, were "motivationally
indoctrinated" by the military and turned into killing machines with all the
social inhibitions and moral compunctions of a Timmy McVeigh. Except they
were secure in the knowledge that what they were doing was, if not legal or
moral, fraught with Old Testament-style justice, rationalizing that the Viet
Cong did it first.

Eventually the irrepressible Americans added their own improvements. In his
autobiography Soldier, Anthony Herbert describes arriving in Saigon in 1965,
reporting to the CIA's Special Operations Group, and being asked to join a
top-secret psywar program. What the CIA wanted Herbert to do, "was to take
charge of execution teams that wiped out entire families."

By 1967, killing entire families had become an integral facet of the CIA's
counter-terror program. Robert Slater was the chief of the CIA's Province
Interrogation Center Program from June 1967 through 1969. In a March 1970
thesis for the Defense Intelligence School, titled "The History,
Organization and Modus Operandi of the Viet Cong Infrastructure," Slater
wrote, "the District Party Secretary usually does not sleep in the same
house or even hamlet where his family lived, to preclude any injury to his
family during assassination attempts."

But, Slater added, "the Allies have frequently found out where the District
Party Secretaries live and raided their homes: in an ensuing fire fight the
secretary's wife and children have been killed and injured."

This is the intellectual context in which the Kerrey atrocity took place.
This CIA strategy of committing war crimes for psychological reasons ­ to
terrorize the enemy's supporters into submission ­ also is what
differentiates Kerrey's atrocity, in legal terms, from other popular methods
of mass murdering civilians, such as bombs from the sky, or economic
boycotts.

Yes, the CIA has a global, illegal strategy of terrorizing people, although
in typical CIA lexicon it's called "anti-terrorism."

When you're waging illegal warfare, language is every bit as important as
weaponry and the will to kill. As George Orwell or Noam Chomsky might
explain, when you're deliberately killing innocent women and children, half
the court-of-public-opinion battle is making it sound legal.

Three Old Vietnam Hands in particular stand out as examples of this
incestuous relationship. Neil Sheehan, CIA-nik and author of the aptly
titled Bright Shining Lie, recently confessed that in 1966 he saw US
soldiers massacre as many as 600 Vietnamese civilians in five fishing
villages. He'd been in Vietnam for three years by then, but it didn't occur
to him that he had discovered a war crime. Now he realizes that the war
crimes issue was always present, but still no mention of his friends in the
CIA.

Former New York Times reporter and author of The Best and The Brightest,
David Halberstam, defended Kerrey on behalf of the media establishment at
the New School campus the week after the story broke. CIA flack Halberstam
described the region around Thanh Phong as "the purest bandit country,"
adding that "by 1969 everyone who lived there would have been
third-generation Vietcong." Which is CIA revisionism at its sickest.

Finally there's New York Times reporter James Lemoyne. Why did he never
write any articles linking the CIA to war crimes in Vietnam? Because his
brother Charles, a Navy officer, was in charge of the CIA's counter-terror
teams in the Delta in 1968.


Phoenix Comes To Thanh Phong

The CIA launched its Phoenix Program in June 1967, after 13 years of
tinkering with several experimental counter-terror and psywar programs, and
building its network of secret interrogation centers. The stated policy was
to replace the bludgeon of indiscriminate bombings and military search and
destroy operations ­ which had alienated the people from the Government of
Vietnam ­ with the scalpel of assassinations of selected members of the Viet
Cong Infrastructure.

A typical Phoenix operation began in a Province Interrogation Center where a
suspected member of the VCI was brought for questioning. After a few days or
weeks or months undergoing various forms of torture, the VCI suspect would
die or give the name and location of his VCI comrades and superiors. That
information would be sent from the Interrogation Center to the local Phoenix
office, which was staffed by Special Branch and Vietnamese military officers
under the supervision of CIA officers. Depending on the suspected importance
of the targeted VCI, the Phoenix people would then dispatch one of the
various action arms available to it, including Seal teams like the one Bob
Kerrey led into Thanh Phong.

In February 1969, the Phoenix Program was still under CIA control. But
because Kien Hoa Province was so important, and because the VCI's District
Party Secretary was supposedly in Thanh Phong, the CIA decided to handle
this particular assassination and mass murder mission without involving the
local Vietnamese. So instead of dispensing the local counter-terror team,
the CIA sent Kerrey's Raiders.

And that, very simply, is how it happened. Kerrey and crew admittedly went
to Thanh Phong to kill the District Party Secretary, and anyone else who got
in the way, including his family and all their friends.


Phoenix Comes Home To Roost

By 1969 the CIA, through Phoenix, was targeting individual VCI and their
families all across Vietnam. Over 20,000 people were assassinated by the end
of the year and hundreds of thousands had been tortured in Province
Interrogation Centers.

On 20 June 1969, the Lower House of the Vietnamese Congress held hearings
about abuses in the Phoenix VCI elimination program. Eighty-six Deputies
signed a petition calling for its immediate termination. Among the charges:
Special Police knowingly arrested innocent people for the purpose of
extortion; people were detained for as long as eight months before being
tried; torture was commonplace. Noting that it was illegal to do so, several
deputies protested instances in which American troops detained or murdered
suspects without Vietnamese authority. Others complained that village chiefs
were not consulted before raids, such as the one on Thanh Phong.

After an investigation in 1970, four Congresspersons concluded that the
CIA's Phoenix Program violated international law. "The people of these
United States," they jointly stated, "have deliberately imposed upon the
Vietnamese people a system of justice which admittedly denies due process of
law," and that in doing so, "we appear to have violated the 1949 Geneva
Convention for the protection of civilian people."

During the hearings, U.S. Representative Ogden Reid said, "if the Union had
had a Phoenix program during the Civil War, its targets would have been
civilians like Jefferson Davis or the mayor of Macon, Georgia."

But the American establishment and media denied it then, and continue to
deny it until today, because Phoenix was a genocidal program -- and the CIA
officials, members of the media who were complicit through their silence,
and the red-blooded American boys who carried it out, are all war criminals.
As Michael Ratner a lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights told
CounterPunch: "Kerrey should be tried as a war criminal. His actions on the
night of February 24-25, 1969 when the seven man Navy Seal unit which he
headed killed approximately twenty unarmed Vietnamese civilians, eighteen of
whom were women and children was a war crime. Like those who murdered at My
Lai, he too should be brought into the dock and tried for his crimes."

Phoenix, alas, also was fiendishly effective and became a template for
future CIA operations. Developed in Vietnam and perfected with the death
squads and media blackout of Afghanistan and El Salvador, it is now employed
by the CIA around the world: in Colombia, in Kosovo, in Ireland with the
British MI6, and in Israel with its other kindred spirit, the Mossad.

The paymasters at the Pentagon will keep cranking out billion dollar missile
defense shields and other Bush league boondoggles. But when it comes to
making the world safe for international capitalism, the political trick is
being more of a homicidal maniac, and more cost effective, than the
terrorists.

Incredibly, Phoenix has become fashionable, it has adhered a kind of
political cachet. Governor Jesse Ventura claims to have been a Navy Seal and
to have "hunted man." Fanatical right-wing US Representative Bob Barr, one
of the Republican impeachment clique, has introduced legislation to
"re-legalize" assassinations. David Hackworth, representing the military
establishment, defended Kerrey by saying "there were thousands of such
atrocities," and that in 1969 his own unit committed "at least a dozen such
horrors." Jack Valenti, representing the business establishment and its
financial stake in the issue, defended Kerrey in the LA Times, saying, "all
the normalities (sic) of a social contract are abandoned," in war.

********.

A famous Phoenix operation, known as the My Lai Massacre, was proceeding
along smoothly, with a grand total of 504 Vietnamese women and children
killed, when a soldier named Hugh Thompson in a helicopter gunship saw what
was happening. Risking his life to preserve that "social contract," Thomson
landed his helicopter between the mass murderers and their victims, turned
his machine guns on his fellow Americans, and brought the carnage to a halt.

Same with screenwriter and journalist Bill Broyles, Vietnam veteran, and
author Brothers In Arms, an excellent book about the Vietnam War. Broyles
turned in a bunch of his fellow Marines for killing civilians.

If Thompson and Broyles were capable of taking individual responsibility,
everyone is. And many did.


Phoenix Reborn

There is no doubt that Bob Kerrey committed a war crime. As he admits, he
went to Vietnam with a knife clenched between his teeth and did what he was
trained to do ­ kidnap, assassinate and mass murder civilians. But there was
no point to his atrocity as he soon learned, no controlling legal authority.
He became a conflicted individual. He remembers that they killed women and
children. But he thinks they came under fire first, before they panicked and
started shooting back. The fog of war clouds his memory

But there isn't that much to forget. Thanh Phong was Kerrey's first mission,
and on his second mission a grenade blew off his foot, abruptly ending his
military career.

Plus which there are plenty of other people to remind Kerrey of what
happened, if anyone will listen. There's Gerhard Klann, the Seal who
disputes Kerrey's account, and two Vietnamese survivors of the raid, Pham
Tri Lanh and Bui Thi Luam, both of whom corroborate Klann's account, as does
a veteran Viet Cong soldier, Tran Van Rung.

As CBS News was careful to point out, the Vietnamese were former VC and thus
hostile witnesses and because there were slight inconsistencies in their
stories, they could not be believed. Klann became the target of Kerrey's pr
machine, which dismissed as an alcoholic with a chip on his shoulder.

Then there is John DeCamp. An army captain in Vietnam, DeCamp worked for the
organization under CIA executive William Colby that ostensibly managed
Phoenix after the CIA let it go in June 1969. DeCamp was elected to the
Nebraska State Senate and served until 1990. A Republican, he claims that
Kerrey led an anti-war march on the Nebraska state capitol in May 1971.
DeCamp claims that Kerrey put a medal, possibly his bronze star, in a mock
coffin, and said, "Viet Cong or North Vietnamese troops are angelic compared
with the ruthless Americans."

Kerrey claims he was in Peru visiting his brother that day. But he
definitely accepted his Medal of Honor from Richard Nixon on 14 May 1970, a
mere ten days after the Ohio National guard killed four student protestors
at Kent State. With that badge of honor pinned on his chest, Kerrey began
walking the gilded road to success. Elected Governor of Nebraska in November
1982, he started dating Deborah Winger, became a celebrity hero, was elected
to the US Senate, became vice-chair of Senate Committee on Intelligence, and
in 1990 staged a run for president. One of the most highly regarded
politicians in America, he showered self-righteous criticism on draft dodger
Bill Clinton's penchant for lying.

Bob Kerrey is a symbol of what it means to be an American, and the patriots
have rallied to his defense. And yet Kerrey accepted a bronze star under
false pretenses, and as John DeCamp suggests, he may have been fragged by
his fellow Seals. For this, he received the Medal of Honor.

John DeCamp calls Bob Kerrey "emotionally disturbed" as a result of his
Vietnam experience.

And Kerrey's behavior has been pathetic. In order to protect himself and his
CIA patrons from being tried as a war criminals, Bob Kerrey has become a
pathological liar too. Kerrey says his actions at Than Phong were an
atrocity, but not a war crime. He says he feels remorse, but not guilt. In
fact, he has continually rehabbed his position on the war itself-moving from
an opponent to more recently an enthusiast. In a 1999 column in the
Washington Post, for example, Kerrey said he had come to view that Vietnam
was a "just war. "Was the war worth the effort and sacrifice, or was it a
mistake?" Kerrey wrote. "When I came home in 1969 and for many years
afterward, I did not believe it was worth it. Today, with the passage of
time and the experience of seeing both the benefits of freedom won by our
sacrifice and the human destruction done by dictatorships, I believe the
cause was just and the sacrifice not in vain."

Then at the Democratic Party Convention in Los Angeles last summer Kerrey
lectured the delegates that they shouldn't be ashamed of the war and that
they should treat Vietnam veterans as war heroes: "I believe I speak for Max
Baucus and every person who has ever served when I say I never felt more
free than when I wore the uniform of our country. This country - this
party - must remember." Free? Free to murder women and children. Is this a
consciousness of guilt or immunity?

CBS News also participated in constructing a curtain of lies. As does every
other official government or media outlet that knows about the CIA's Phoenix
Program, which continues to exist and operate worldwide today, but fails to
mention it.

Why?

Because if the name of one targeted Viet Cong cadre can be obtained, then
all the names can be obtained, and then a war crimes trial becomes
imperative. And that's the last thing the Establishment will allow to
happen.

Average Americans, however, consider themselves a nation ruled by laws and
an ethic of fair play, and with the Kerry confession comes an opportunity
for America to redefine itself in more realistic terms. The discrepancies in
his story beg investigation. He says he was never briefed on the rules of
engagement. But a "pocket card" with the Laws of Land Warfare was given to
each member of the US Armed Forces in Vietnam.

Does it matter that Kerrey would lie about this? Yes. General Bruce Palmer,
commander of the same Ninth Division that devastated Kien Koa Province in
1969, objected to the "involuntary assignment" of American soldiers to
Phoenix. He did not believe that "people in uniform, who are pledged to
abide by the Geneva Conventions, should be put in the position of having to
break those laws of warfare."

It was the CIA that forced soldiers like Kerrey into Phoenix operations, and
the hidden hand of the CIA lingers over his war crime. Kerrey even uses the
same rationale offered by CIA officer DeSilva. According to Kerrey, "the
Viet Cong were a thousand per cent more ruthless than" the Seals or U.S.
Army.

But the Geneva Conventions, customary international law and the Uniform Code
of Military Justice all prohibit the killing of noncombatant civilians. The
alleged brutality of others is no justification. By saying it is, Kerrey
implicates the people who generated that rationale: the CIA. That is why
there is a moral imperative to scrutinize the Phoenix Program and the CIA
officers who created it, the people who participated in it, and the
journalists who covered it up ­ to expose the dark side of our national
psyche, the part that allows us to employ terror to assure our world
dominance.

To accomplish this there must be a war crimes tribunal. This won't be easy.
The US government has gone to great lengths to shield itself from such legal
scrutiny, at the same it selectively manipulates international institutions,
such as the UN, to go after people like Slobodan Milosevic.

According to human rights lawyer Michael Ratner the legal avenues for
bringing Kerrey and his cohorts to justice are quite limited. A civil suit
could be lodged against Kerrey by the families of the victims brought in the
United States under the Alien Tort Claims Act. "These are the kinds of cases
I did against Gramajo, Pangaitan (Timor)," Ratner told us. "The main problem
here is that it is doubtful the Vietnamese would sue a liberal when they are
dying to better relations with the US. I would do this case if could get
plaintiffs--so far no luck." According to Ratner, there is no statute of
limitations problem as it is newly discovered evidence and there is a stron
argument particularly in the criminal context that there is no statute of
limitations for war crimes.

But criminal cases in the US present a difficult, if not impossible,
prospect. Now that Kerrey is discharged from the Navy, the military courts,
which went after Lt. Calley for the My Lai massacre, has no jurisdiction
over him. "As to criminal case in the US--my pretty answer is no," says
Ratner. "The US first passed a war crimes statute (18 USC sec. 2441 War
Crimes) in 1996--that statute makes
what Kerrey did a war crime punishable by death of life imprisonment--but it
was passed after the crime and criminal statutes are not retroactive." In
1988, Congress enacted a statute against genocide, which was might apply to
Kerrey's actions, but it to can't be applied retroactively. Generally at the
time of Kerrey's acts in Vietnam, US criminal law did not extend to what US
citizens did overseas unless they were military.

[As a senator, Kerrey, it should be noted, voted for the war crimes law,
thus opening the opportunity for others to be prosecuted for crimes similar
to those he that committed but is shielded from.]

The United Nations is a possibility, but a long shot. They could establish
an ad hoc tribunal such as it did with the Rwanda ICTR and Yugoslavia ICTY.
"This would require action by UN Security council could do it, but what are
the chances?" says Ratner. "There is still the prospect for a US veto What
that really points out is how those tribunals are bent toward what the US
and West want."

Prosecution in Vietnam and or another country and extradition is also a
possibility. It can be argued that war crimes are crimes over which there is
universal jurisdiction--in fact that is obligation of countries-under Geneva
Convention of 1948--to seek out and prosecute war criminals. "Universal
jurisdiction does not require the presence of the defendant--he can be
indicted and tried in some countries in absentia--or his extradition can be
requested", says Ratner. "Some countries may have statutes permitting this.
Kerrey should check his travel plans and hire a good lawyer before he gets
on a plane. He can use Kissinger's lawyer." CP

Douglas Valentine is the author of The Phoenix Program, the only
comprehensive account of the CIA's torture and assassination operation in
Vietnam, as well as TDY a chilling novel about the CIA and the drug trade.

see also
http://tinyurl.com/2snqu

[sparky]

Very disturbing. I'm glad that documents confirming these realities are finally being released to corroborate the vets who came back to tell such stories but weren't believed.

[Greenhat]

Mr. Valentine seems to be trying to put all things under the umbrella of the Phoenix Program, even things that obviously do not belong (My Lai as a Phoenix project? Not a chance). Phoenix was primarily an intelligence gathering program, although it did get out of hand with direct action missions eventually. However, actions against the VCI are not warcrimes. VCI are not civilians, they are support personnel.

Sparky, there is only one reference to an original document in that entire article. The rest is just references to magazine articles and books and one set of claimed quotes. Even more noticable, it discredits the books it doesn't want to address (although Halberstam is generally seen as a more accurate source than Hebert, here he is claimed to be a CIA flak) It's conjecture as far as what he establishes. I will be interested to see how his book is received by historians.

The Congressional Record at least seems accurate, although quoted out of context and followed immediately by an imflammatory and obviously incorrect comment (genocide is the elimination of a ethnic or cultural group of people from existence, Phoenix was never genocide).

[Craig]

http://www.hnn.us/articles/1802.html


The Vietnam War Crimes You Never Heard Of
By Nick Turse
Mr. Turse is a Columbia University graduate student completing a dissertation on American war crimes during the Vietnam War.

On October 19, 2003, the Ohio-based newspaper the Toledo Blade launched a four-day series of investigative reports exposing a string of atrocities by an elite, volunteer, 45-man "Tiger Force" unit of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division over the course of seven months in 1967. The Blade goes on to state that in 1971 the Army began a four and a half year investigation of the alleged torture of prisoners, rapes of civilian women, the mutilation of bodies and killing of anywhere from nine to well over one hundred unarmed civilians, among other acts. The articles further report that the Army's inquiry concluded that eighteen U.S. soldiers committed war crimes ranging from murder and assault to dereliction of duty. However, not one of the soldiers, even of those still on active duty at the time of the investigation, was ever court martialed in connection with the heinous crimes. Moreover, six suspected war criminals were allowed to resign from military service during the criminal investigations specifically to avoid prosecution.

The Toledo Blade articles represent some of the best reporting on a Vietnam War crime by any newspaper, during or since the end of the conflict. Unfortunately, the articles tell a story that was all too common. As a historian writing his dissertation on U.S. war crimes and atrocities during the Vietnam War, I have been immersed in just the sort of archival materials the Toledo Blade used in its pieces, but not simply for one incident but hundreds if not thousands of analogous events. I can safely, and sadly, say that the "Tiger Force" atrocities are merely the tip of the iceberg in regard to U.S.-perpetrated war crimes in Vietnam. However, much of the mainstream historical literature dealing with Vietnam War atrocities (and accompanying cover-ups and/or sham investigations), has been marginalized to a great extent -- aside from obligatory remarks concerning the My Lai massacre, which is, itself, often treated as an isolated event. Unfortunately, the otherwise excellent reporting of the Toledo Blade draws upon and feeds off this exceptionalist argument to a certain extent. As such, the true scope of U.S.-perpetrated atrocities is never fully addressed in the articles. The men of the "Tiger Force" are labeled as "Rogue GIs" and the authors simply mention the that Army "conducted 242 war-crimes investigations in Vietnam, [that] a third were substantiated, leading to 21 convictions... according to a review of records at the National Archives" – facts of dubious value that obscure the scope and number of war crimes perpetrated in Vietnam and feed the exceptionalist argument.

Even an accompanying Blade piece on "Other Vietnam Atrocities," tends to decontextualize the "Tiger Force" incidents, treating them as fairly extraordinary events by listing only three other relatively well known atrocity incidents: former Senator, presidential candidate and Navy SEAL Bob Kerrey's raid on the hamlet of Thang Phong; the massacre at Son Thang -- sometimes referred to as the "Marine Corps' My Lai"; and the war crimes allegations of Lt. Col. Anthony Herbert -- most famously chronicled in his memoir Soldier. This short list, however, doesn't even hint at the scope and number of similar criminal acts.

For example, the Toledo Blade reports that its "review of thousands of classified Army documents, National Archives records, and radio logs reveals [the "Tiger Force"] ... carried out the longest series of atrocities in the Vietnam War [from May and November, 1967]...." Unfortunately, this seven month atrocity-spree is not nearly the longest on record. Nor is it even the longest string of atrocities by one unit within its service branch. According to formerly classified Army documents, an investigation disclosed that from at least March 1968 through October 1969, "Vietnamese [civilian] detainees were subjected to maltreatment" by no less than twenty-three separate interrogators of the 172d Military Intelligence (MI) Detachment. The inquiry found that, in addition to using "electrical shock by means of a field telephone," an all too commonly used method of torture by Americans during the war, MI personnel also struck detainees with their fists, sticks and boards and employed a form of water torture which impaired prisoners' ability to breath.

Similar to the "Tiger Force" atrocities chronicled by the Blade, documents indicate that no disciplinary actions were taken against any of the individuals implicated in the long-running series of atrocities, including 172d MI personnel Norman Bowers, Franciszek Pyclik and Eberhard Gasper who were all on active duty at the time that the allegations were investigated by Army officials. In fact, in 1972, Bowers's commanding general pronounced that "no disciplinary or administrative action" would be taken against the suspected war criminal and in a formerly classified memorandum to the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, prepared by Colonel Murray Williams on behalf of Brigadier General R.G. Gard in January 1973, it was noted that the "...determination by commanders to take no action against three personnel on active duty who were suspected of committing an offense" had not been publicly acknowledged. Their crimes and identities kept a secret, Bowers, Pyclik and Gasper apparently escaped any prosecution, let alone punishment, for their alleged actions.

Similarly, the Toledo Blade pays particular attention to Sam Ybarra, a "notorious suspect," who was named in seven of the thirty "Tiger Force" war crimes allegations investigated by the Army -- including the rape and fatal stabbing of a 13-year-old girl and the brutal killing of a 15-year-old boy. Yet, Ybarra's notorious reputation may well pale in comparison to that of Sergeant Roy E. "the Bummer" Bumgarner, a soldier who served with the 1st Cavalry Division and later the 173d Airborne Brigade. According to a former commander, "the Bummer" was rumored to have "personally killed over 1,500 people" during a forty-two week stretch in Vietnam. Even if the number was exaggerated, clues on how Bumgarner may have obtained high "body counts" came to light in the course of an Army criminal investigation of an incident that took place on February 25, 1969. According to investigation documents, Bumgarner and a subordinate rounded up three civilians found working in a rice paddy, marched them to a secluded area and murdered them. "The Bummer" then arranged the bodies on the ground with their heads together and a grenade was exploded next to them in an attempt to cover-up their crime. Assorted weapons were then planted near the mutilated corpses to make them appear to have been enemy troops.

During an Army criminal investigation of the incident, men in Bumgarner's unit told investigators that they had heard rumors of the sergeant carrying out similar acts in the past. Said one soldier in a sworn statement to Army investigators:

"I've heard of Bumgarner doing it before -- planting weapons on bodies when there is doubt as to their military status. I've heard quite a few rumors about Bumgarner killing unarmed people. Only a couple weeks ago I heard that Bumgarner had killed a Vietnamese girl and two younger kids (boys), who didn't have any weapons."

Unlike Sam Ybarra, who had been discharged from the military by the time the allegations against him came to light and then refused to cooperate with investigators, "the Bummer" was charged with premeditated murder and tried by general court martial. He was convicted only of manslaughter and his punishment consisted merely of a demotion in rank and a fine of $97 a month for six months. Moreover, after six months, Bumgarner promptly re-enlisted in the Army. His first and only choice of assignments -- Vietnam. Records indicate he got his wish!

Military records demonstrate that the "Tiger Force" atrocities are only the tip of a vast submerged history of atrocities in Vietnam. In fact, while most atrocities were likely never chronicled or reported, the archival record is still rife with incidents analogous to those profiled in the Blade articles, including the following atrocities chronicled in formerly classified Army documents:

* A November 1966 incident in which an officer in the Army's Fourth Infantry Division, severed an ear from a Vietnamese corpse and affixed it to the radio antenna of a jeep as an ornament. The officer was given a non-judicial punishment and a letter of reprimand.

* An August 1967 atrocity in which a 13-year-old Vietnamese child was raped by American MI interrogator of the Army's 196th Infantry Brigade. The soldier was convicted only of indecent acts with a child and assault. He served seven months and sixteen days for his crime.

* A September 1967 incident in which an American sergeant killed two Vietnamese children -- executing one at point blank range with a bullet to the head. Tried by general court martial in 1970, the sergeant pleaded guilty to, and was found guilty of, unpremeditated murder. He was, however, sentenced to no punishment.

* An atrocity that took place on February 4, 1968, just over a month before the My Lai massacre, in the same province by a man from the same division (Americal). The soldier admitted to his commanding officer and other men of his unit that he gunned down three civilians as they worked in a field. A CID investigation substantiated his confession and charges of premeditated murder were preferred against him. The soldier requested a discharge, which was granted by the commanding general of the Americal Division, in lieu of court martial proceedings.

* A series of atrocities similar to, and occurring the same year as, the "Tiger Force" war crimes in which one unit allegedly engaged in an orgy of murder, rape and mutilation, over the course of several months.

While not yielding the high-end body count estimate of the "Tiger Force" series of atrocities, the above incidents begin to demonstrate the ubiquity of the commission of atrocities on the part of American forces during the Vietnam War. Certainly, war crimes, such as murder, rape and mutilation were not an everyday affair for American combat soldiers in Vietnam, however, such acts were also by no means as exceptional as often portrayed in recent historical literature or as tacitly alluded to in the Blade articles.

The excellent investigative reporting of the Toledo Blade is to be commended for shedding light on war crimes committed by American soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division in 1967. However, it is equally important to understand that the "Tiger Force" atrocities were not the mere result of "Rogue GIs" but instead stem from what historian Christian Appy has termed the American "doctrine of atrocity" during the Vietnam War -- a strategy built upon official U.S. dictums relating to the body count, free-fire zones, search and destroy tactics and the strategy of attrition as well as unofficial tenets such as "kill anything that moves," intoned during the "Tiger Force" atrocities and in countless other atrocity tales, or the "mere gook rule" which held that "If it's dead and Vietnamese, it's VC." Further, it must also be recognized that the "Tiger Force" atrocities, the My Lai massacre, the Herbert allegations and the few other better-known war crimes were not isolated or tangentially-related incidents, but instead are only the most spectacular or best publicized of what was an on-going string of atrocities, large and small, that spanned the entire duration of the war.

The headline of one Blade article proclaims, "Earlier Tiger Force probe could have averted My Lai carnage," referring to the fact that the 101st Airborne Division's "Tiger Force" troops operated in the same province (Quang Ngai), with the same mission (search and destroy) months before the Americal Division's men committed their war crimes. But atrocities were not a localized problem or one that only emerged in 1967. Instead, the pervasive disregard for the laws of war had begun prior to U.S. buildup in 1965 and had roots in earlier conflicts. Only by recognizing these facts can we hope to begin to understand the "Tiger Force" atrocities and the history of American war crimes in Vietnam, writ large.

# Related Links Seymour Hersh, "Uncovered" (New Yorker)
# ABC News Report

This article was first published by http://www.zmag.org/ and is reprinted with the permission of the author.

[sparky]

Wow, Craig. That was great. Thanks! In describing the torture in Bush's Iraqi gulag, Limbaugh said...

[Craig]