NOT JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS: AVOIDING AND REPORTING ATROCITIES DURING THE VIETNAM WAR by CHRISTOPHER JAMES LEVESQUE ANDREW HUEBNER, COMMITTEE CO-CHAIR DANIEL RICHES, COMMITTEE CO-CHAIR KARI FREDERICKSON JOHN GIGGIE JAMES S. OLSON A DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History in the Graduate School of The University of Alabama TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA 2014 Copyright Christopher James Levesque 2014 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT This dissertation develops a history of soldiers’ efforts to report war crimes over the course of the Vietnam War. Previous scholarship that addressed this issue largely dismissed GIs who alleged war crimes as political activists, dupes of the media, or individuals seeking forgiveness for their actions in combat. However, these three categories are insufficient to understand the motives leading troops to claim that they witnessed war crimes during their service in Southeast Asia. Nor do they account for how soldiers chose to make their allegations, or how their rationales or methods changed over time. By re-examining the historical record of GI involvement in the antiwar movement, media accounts of soldiers alleging war crimes, and declassified Department of Defense documents, this dissertation presents a new framework for understanding both how and why American soldiers reported atrocities. Soldiers adopted four primary venues when they alleged war crimes in Vietnam: their chain of command, the federal government, the media, or the antiwar movement. Generally, soldiers who remained convinced that the Army’s hierarchy would properly investigate atrocity allegations reported atrocities through their local chains of command. As soldiers became increasingly disenchanted with the Army and the war, they chose more public venues to report war crimes. Soldiers who no longer believed that the Army, the federal government, or the press would act to address the problem of atrocities turned to the antiwar movement in an effort to educate the public about the conduct of the war, and its effects on both troops and Vietnamese noncombatants. This last group of soldiers naively hoped that just by publicizing the horrors of ii the war, the American public would call for it to end, forcing the Johnson and Nixon administrations to act. A key element affecting whether individuals chose to report atrocities was Seymour Hersh’s explosive exposé of the My Lai Massacre in November 1969. Many soldiers who subsequently made war crimes allegations expressed their concerns that Lt. William Calley was a scapegoat selected by the Pentagon to placate the American public. They believed that commanding officers and policy-makers should accept the responsibility for American atrocities in Vietnam. iii DEDICATION Broadly speaking, this dissertation is dedicated to the 2,709,918 American military personnel who served in Vietnam between August 5, 1964, and May 7, 1975, most of whose experiences of the war remain untold. More specifically, this work is dedicated to Vietnam veterans such as James Henry, David Johnson, Garry Battles, and Hugh Thompson, who risked official repercussions or alienating family and friends when they sought to report atrocities they witnessed in Vietnam. Their efforts continue to help us gain new understandings of the war in which they served. iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) Citizens Commission of Inquiry (CCI) Concerned Officers Movement (COM) Criminal Investigation Division (CID) Department of Defense (DoD) International Union of Students (IUS) Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP) Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) National Veterans' Inquiry (NVI) Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) North Vietnamese Army (NVA) Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Public Information Office (PIO) Radio-Telephone Operator (RTO) Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) Veterans Administration (VA) Viet Cong (VC) v Vietnam War Crimes Working Group (VWCWG) Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) Winter Soldier Investigation (WSI) World Foundation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation would not have come to fruition without the help and support of a large group of people. First, I would like to thank the University of Alabama for the opportunity to complete my formal education in History. Second, I extend my heartfelt thanks to my co-chairs, Dr. Daniel Riches and Dr. Andrew Huebner for shepherding me through the dissertation process when the prospects for completion seemed bleak after several setbacks. Third, I would like to thank the other members of my dissertation committee at the University of Alabama, Dr. Kari Frederickson and Dr. John Giggie, for their assistance in arranging a desperately needed extension to complete my degree. Additionally, I must thank my outside reader, Dr. James Olson, who introduced me to the complex topic of My Lai during my time at Sam Houston State University, and for his willingness to once again serve on a committee critical to my education. The late Col. Cecil B. Currey, Ph.D, of the University of South Florida also proved a source of intellectual inspiration for this project. Where Dr. Olson introduced me to My Lai, Col. Currey taught generations of Army ROTC cadets that the Vietnam War was far more complex than they could imagine. Several other kind individuals also deserve my thanks. Fellow University of Alabama graduate student Matt Pritchett went out of his way to help me track down an obscure source that was not available locally, taking time away from his family and studies to find and copy the relevant pages. Similarly, I thank Dr. Rachel McWhorter, for reading a draft of my dissertation in an effort to help me understand where I was going off the rails in integrating my evidence and vii arguments more tightly together. Finally, I thank Steve Rose, of the Kansas City Star, and Jake Eubanks of the Johnson County (Kansas) Public Library for their assistance in tracking down one of Mr. Rose’s editorials published in his family’s now defunct newspaper, the Johnson County Scout. In addition, research for this dissertation was possible only through several generous grants. Financial support from the American Historical Association through the Albert J. Beveridge Grant for Research in the Western Hemisphere, the Society for Military History, ABC-Clio, the University of Alabama Department of History, and the Summersell Center for the Study of the South allowed me to travel to the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. Funding from various sources also allowed me to acquire copies of courts-martial files from the National Archives in St. Louis, Missouri. Finally, returning to graduate school would have been impossible without the support of my friends and family. I would like to thank my parents, Barbara Reeder Edwards and Michael Levesque, for their emotional and financial support over the course of the past seven years, as well as the confidence that I would be successful in anything I worked to achieve. My in-laws, Janet and John Noe, also provided encouragement throughout this process. Dr. Karin Levesque, my aunt, not only provided financial support when needed, but also encouragement and commiseration, after having completed her own doctorate and medical degrees. Even all of this assistance would not have mattered without the enduring love and support of my wife, Heather, who put up with my stress and angst while completing law school and studying for the Florida Bar Exam. viii CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................ ii DEDICATION ........................................................................................... iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS ........................................v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................ vii LIST OF FIGURES .....................................................................................x 1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................1 2. THE TURNING POINT – MY LAI ......................................................35 3. GOING THROUGH CHANNELS ........................................................63 4. SAVING THE ARMY FROM ITSELF ................................................93 5. GOING PUBLIC .................................................................................123 6. TAKING TO THE STREETS .............................................................161 7. CONCLUSION ....................................................................................200 REFERENCES ........................................................................................214 ix LIST OF FIGURES 1.1 Level of Soldier Discontent and Method of Reporting .........................27 x CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION “Only an extraordinary few could withstand the pressures and maintain their moral beings in that awful place, in those terrible conditions. The extraordinary few somehow did withstand it. But we shouldn’t – our society shouldn’t be structured, ought not to be structured, so that only the extraordinary few can conduct themselves in a moral fashion.” – Ron Ridenhour1 Historians have dealt with allegations of atrocities in Vietnam in several ways. The most common is to downplay the issue by suggesting that such events were aberrations committed by