Vietnam War Crimes Working Group Files

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The United States "National Archives and Records Administration" houses a collection of formerly secret documents compiled by Pentagon investigators in the early 1970s, confirming that atrocities by U.S. forces in Vietnam were more extensive than had been officially acknowledged. The documents detail 320 alleged incidents that were substantiated by Army investigators — not including the 1968 "My Lai massacre".

The records were declassified in 1994, after 20 years as required by the "Freedom of Information Act", and relocated to the National Archives in College Park, Md., where they went largely unnoticed. Nick Turse a freelance journalist discovered the archive while researching his doctoral dissertation for the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia University. He managed to examine most of the files and obtained copies of about 3,000 pages — representing roughly a third of the total — before government officials removed them from the public shelves in 2002, stating they contained personal information that was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

Nick Turse collaborating with Deborah Nelson a former staff writer and current Washington investigative editor for The Los Angeles Times, employed these documents to form the core of a series of articles. Augmented with Army inspector general records in the National Archives; FBI and Army Criminal Investigation Division records; documents shared by military veterans; and case files and related records in the Col. Henry Tufts Archive at the University of Michigan. As well as interviews with participants, witnesses, survivors and former Army officials both in the United States and Vietnam.

While the archive contains 320 substantiated incidents, the records also contain allegations of more than 500 atrocities that investigators could not prove or were otherwise discounted. The archive at 9,000 pages is the largest collection of documents to have surfaced to date. It includes investigation files, sworn statements by witnesses and status reports for top military brass.

In total the documents describe a seemingly endemic violent minority within U.S. Army units throughout the Southeast Asian theater during this period, rather than the official picture of "rogue units". With widespread duplicity at various levels of the command structure. This official documentation lends considerable credence to widespread anecdotal evidence as presented by "informal" investigations of the time such as the "Russell Tribunal", "National Veterans Inquiry", Citizens Commissions of Inquiry" and the Winter Soldier Investigation".

[edit] Substantiated cases summary

Seven previously unacknowledged massacres from 1967 through 1971 in which at least 137 civilians died.
Seventy-eight other attacks on noncombatants in which at least 57 were killed, 56 wounded and 15 sexually assaulted.
One hundred forty-one instances in which U.S. soldiers tortured civilian detainees or prisoners of war with fists, sticks, bats, water or electric shock.

Two hundred and three soldiers accused of harming Vietnamese civilians or prisoners were found to warrant formal charges after investigation, and were subsequently referred to the soldiers' superiors for official action. Of the 203 cases, 57 of them stood a court-martial with just 23 convicted, 14 received prison sentences ranging from six months to 20 years, most received significant reductions on appeal. The stiffest sentence went to a military intelligence interrogator convicted of committing indecent acts on a 13-year-old girl in an interrogation hut in 1967. He served seven months of a 20-year term, the records show. Many substantiated cases were closed with a letter of reprimand, a fine or, in more than half the cases, no action at all.