Fifty years ago on this day, November 12, 1969, Seymour Hersh broke the My Lai massacre story

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My Lai Massacre

Mỹ Lai Massacre
Thảm sát Mỹ Lai


Photo taken by United States Army photographer Ronald L. Haeberle on 16 March 1968, in the aftermath of the Mỹ Lai Massacre showing mostly women and children dead on a road

Location Sơn Mỹ (village), Sơn Tịnh District, South Vietnam
Coordinates: Coordinates: 15°10?42?N 108°52?10?E
Date: 16 March 1968
Target: y Lai 4 and My Khe 4 hamlets
Deaths: 347 according to the United States Army (not including My Khe killings), others estimate more than 400 killed and injuries are unknown; the Vietnamese government lists 504 killed in total from both My Lai and My Khe

The Mỹ Lai Massacre (/ˌmiːˈlaɪ/; Vietnamese: Thảm sát Mỹ Lai [tʰâːm ʂǎːt mǐˀ lāːj] (About this soundlisten)) was the Vietnam War mass murder of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops in Sơn Tịnh District, South Vietnam, on 16 March 1968. Between 347 and 504 unarmed people were killed by U.S. Army soldiers from Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment and Company B, 4th Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd (Americal) Infantry Division. Victims included men, women, children, and infants. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated as were children as young as 12. Twenty-six soldiers were charged with criminal offenses, but only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., a platoon leader in C Company, was convicted. Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was originally given a life sentence, but served only three and a half years under house arrest.
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Aftermath
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Reporting, cover-up and investigation
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Six months later, Tom Glen, a 21-year-old soldier of the 11th Light Infantry Brigade, wrote a letter to General Creighton Abrams, the new MACV commander. He described an ongoing and routine brutality against Vietnamese civilians on the part of American forces in Vietnam that he personally witnessed and then concluded,

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.

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Independent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, after extensive interviews with Calley, broke the Mỹ Lai story on 12 November 1969, on the Associated Press wire service; on 20 November, Time, Life and Newsweek all covered the story, and CBS televised an interview with Paul Meadlo, a soldier in Calley's unit during the massacre. The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio) published explicit photographs of dead villagers killed at Mỹ Lai.
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[UTUSN]

1. K&R, which Colon POWELL proceeded to attempt to cover up

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2. DURec