The Vietnam War Crimes Working Group (VWCWG) was a

Pentagon In geometry, a pentagon (from the Greek πέντε ''pente'' meaning ''five'' and γωνία ''gonia'' meaning ''angle'') is any five-sided polygon or 5-gon. The sum of the internal angles in a simple pentagon is 540°. A pentagon may be simpl ...

task force set up in the wake of the My Lai massacre and its media disclosure. The goal of the VWCWG was to attempt to ascertain the veracity of emerging claims of war crimes by U.S. armed forces in Vietnam allegedly committed during the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...

period. The investigation compiled over 9,000 pages of investigative files, sworn statements by witnesses and status reports for top military officers, indicating that 320 alleged incidents had factual basis.Civilian Killings Went Unpunished
by Nick Turse and Deborah Nelson,

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

, August 6, 2006

Working Group Files

The group's files document 320 alleged incidents that were substantiated by

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

investigators—not including the 1968 My Lai massacre. The documents are housed by the United States

National Archives and Records Administration The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an " independent federal agency of the United States government within the executive branch", charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records. It i ...

(NARA) and were declassified in the mid-1990s. Journalists such as Nick Turse and Deborah Nelson have written about the files, using them to claim that atrocities were more extensive than had been officially acknowledged.

Declassification and access

In 1990 Kali Tal, the editor of a small-circulation journal called ''Vietnam Generation'', was tipped off to the existence of the Vietnam Working Group records by an archivist at NARA. She sent in a

Freedom of Information Act Freedom of Information Act may refer to the following legislations in different jurisdictions which mandate the national government to disclose certain data to the general public upon request: * Freedom of Information Act 1982, the Australian act * ...

(FOIA) request and eventually received access to some of the records in 1992. After viewing them, she wrote a brief article about their content in a ''Vietnam Generation'' newsletter, but did not have the resources to pursue the matter. The records were declassified in 1994, after 20 years as required by the FOIA, and relocated to the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, where they went largely unnoticed. Nick Turse, a freelance

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

, rediscovered the archive while researching his doctoral dissertation for the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. 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 FOIA.

''Los Angeles Times'' exposure

Nick Turse collaborated with

Deborah Nelson Deborah Nelson is a Pulitzer prize-winning freelance journalist at Reuters and the Associate Professor of Investigative Reporting at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. Nelson earned her B.S. in Journalism from N ...

, a former staff writer and current Washington D.C. investigative editor for the ''

'', to employ these documents to form the core of a series of articles. They were augmented by Army Inspector-General records in the National Archives;

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...

and

Army Criminal Investigation Division The United States Army Criminal Investigation Division (USACID), previously known as the United States Army Criminal Investigation Command (USACIDC) is the primary federal law enforcement agency of the United States Department of the Army. Its p ...

*(CID) records; documents shared by military veterans; and case files and related records in the Col. Henry Tufts Archive at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

; as well as interviews with participants, witnesses, survivors and former Army officials in both 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. At 9,000 pages, the archive is the largest collection of such documents to have surfaced to date. It includes investigation files, sworn statements by witnesses and status reports for senior military officers. In total, the documents describe a seemingly endemic violent minority within U.S. Army units throughout the Southeast Asian theater during this period, in contrast to the official picture of "rogue units", with widespread duplicity at various levels of the command structure. This official documentation lends credence to widespread anecdotal evidence as presented by unofficial investigations of the time, such as the Russell Tribunal, the

National Veterans Inquiry The National Veterans' Inquiry was a national-level inquiry into American war crimes in Vietnam. They were held December 1–3, 1970 in Washington, DC. Origin In November 1969, after the My Lai massacre was revealed in the U.S. press, the Bertran ...

, the

Citizens Commission of Inquiry The National Committee for a Citizens Commission of Inquiry on U.S. war crimes in Vietnam was founded in New York by Ralph Schoenman in November 1969 to document American atrocities throughout Indochina. The formation of the organization was prompte ...

, and the

Winter Soldier Investigation The "Winter Soldier Investigation" was a media event sponsored by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) from January 31, 1971, to February 2, 1971. It was intended to publicize war crimes and atrocities by the United States Armed Forces ...

. They also were used for a book by Nelson entitled ''The War Behind Them'', which includes stories about how the interviews were conducted, transcripts, and descriptions of travels to Vietnam for further investigations. One interviewee was

Lawrence Wilkerson Lawrence B. Wilkerson (born June 15, 1945) is a retired United States Army Colonel and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell. Since the end of his military career, Wilkerson has criticized many aspects of the Iraq ...

, who described the situation surrounding '

free fire zone A freedom zone to fire in U.S. military parlance is a fire control measure, used for coordination between adjacent combat units. The definition used in the Vietnam War by U.S. troops may be found in field manual FM 6-20: :A specific designated a ...

s'.

Partial list of substantiated cases

*Seven previously unacknowledged massacres from 1967 through 1971 in which at least 137 civilians died. *Seventy-eight other attacks on

noncombatant Non-combatant is a term of art in the law of war and international humanitarian law to refer to civilians who are not taking a direct part in hostilities; persons, such as combat medics and military chaplains, who are members of the belligerent a ...

s in which at least 57 were killed, 56 wounded and 15 sexually assaulted. *One hundred forty-one instances in which U.S. soldiers

torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts c ...

d civilian detainees or

prisoners of war A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held Captivity, captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold priso ...

with fists, sticks, bats, water or

electric shock Electrical injury is a physiological reaction caused by electric current passing through the body. The injury depends on the density of the current, tissue resistance and duration of contact. Very small currents may be imperceptible or produce ...

(sometimes using Field telephones). 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. Only 23 were convicted, of whom 14 received prison sentences ranging from six months to 20 years; most received significant reductions on appeal. Many substantiated cases were closed with a

letter of reprimand A letter of reprimand is a US Department of Defense procedure involving a letter to an employee or service member from their superior that details the wrongful actions of the person and the punishment that can be expected. A ''Formal Letter of Re ...

, a fine or, in more than half the cases, no action at all. The stiffest sentence went to a

military intelligence Military intelligence is a military discipline that uses information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to assist commanders in their decisions. This aim is achieved by providing an assessment of data from a ...

interrogator convicted of committing indecent acts on a 13-year-old girl in an interrogation hut in 1967. The records show that he served seven months of a 20-year term.

Preventing communication to Congress

The VWCWG also tried to intercept communications by U.S. officers in the field revealing atrocities by U.S. forces to prevent them reaching Congress.Los Angeles Times, 6 Aug. 2006
"Civilian Killings Went Unpunished"
/ref>

References

External links

Vietnam - The War Crimes Files ''
\
''Permanent Mirror''
'

'' coverage
''The Secret History of the Vietnam War''
Interview with Nick Turse detailing the discovery {{DEFAULTSORT:Vietnam War Crimes Working Group Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War Vietnam War crimes United States military law United States Army in the Vietnam War Torture in Vietnam