Buried Secrets, Brutal Truths

One of the arguments that the Swift Boat Liars For Bush has is that Kerry testified to Congress about the atrocities being committed in Vietnam, claiming that Kerry dishonored those who fought in Vietnam.

In April, Toledo's The Blade won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on Tiger Force, an elite platoon in Vietnam that had massacred unarmed civilians. An investigation by the Army had been opened in the 1970s, but the results never came to light and no charges came about. The Blade's series, Buried Secrets, Brutal Truths, began in October and soon afterwards, the Army reconsidered its case.

This series reveals for the first time anywhere that members of a platoon of American soldiers from the 101st known as Tiger Force slaughtered an untold number of Vietnamese civilians over a seven-month period in 1967. After a 4-1/2-year Army investigation concluded that at least 18 Tiger Force soldiers committed war crimes, the matter was dropped by the Army. The official files were buried in the Army's archives since 1975, and to this day military officials continue to withhold them from the public. [...] In this case, we still don't know who made the final decision not to prosecute. The Nixon White House received case updates of the Tiger Force investigation in 1972 and 1973 at the request of presidential counsel John Dean. Reports also went to Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger and Secretary of the Army Howard "Bo" Callaway. The decision not to prosecute was made more than a year after Gerald Ford became president in August, 1974, but it is not known how far up in the Ford administration the decision went. Assistants to Mr. Ford and Mr. Schlesinger said neither would comment. Mr. Callaway said he has no recollection of the Tiger Force investigation, but that if it were brought to his attention he would not have "swept it under the rug." [...] Tiger Force was created in the fall of 1965 as a special highly trained reconnaissance unit to find the enemy and report enemy positions to U.S. air and ground forces. Its members wore special tiger-striped uniforms, they could grow beards, and could carry their own side arms. The unit's slogan was "out guerrilla the guerrillas." After listening to details of the Tiger Force case, William Eckhardt, lead prosecutor in the My Lai court-martial and now a law professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, said, "What I see is a loss of control and obviously ill discipline, far beyond what you would want in Vietnam." Mr. Eckhardt said The Blade's investigation is important, but the public also needs to know that most soldiers don't act this way. "I think whatever public institutions do, good or bad, is subject to public scrutiny," he said. "This is something that should be open to scrutiny as troubling as it is." The Army, citing privacy concerns for former soldiers, says it will not release records of the Tiger Force investigation or records that could explain why the case was dropped in 1975. more >>