I read this article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer online and I was reminded of what was said about Kerry during the campaign. I was especially disturbed about how the hawks and conservatives doubted the veracity of the My Lai story when it first appeared. Sounds like a familar tactic, attack the messenger. Then came the pictures, however it didn't stop the military from asking that they not be published. Kind of like the Iraq prision scandal. I will never forgive or forget Bush's campaign people and the swiftboat veterans for their conduct during the campaign. Also it took over a year and a half for the story to come out. Kind of makes you wonder what we will know about Iraq in 2006. Finally, read at the bottom what happened to Lt Calley, I bet you didn't know that he killed 347 people all by himself.
35 YEARS AGO TODAY
THE POWER OF PICTURES
Saturday, November 20, 2004
Michael Heaton
Plain Dealer Reporter
The images from My Lai were both numb ing and horrifying.
They showed for the first time more than 300 men, women and children massacred by American troops in Vietnam. (The final Army estimate for the number of dead civilians was 347. The official memorial in the village of My Lai lists 504.)
The pictures were of corpses littering dirt roads and dumped into ditches. Readers saw the faces of terrified, elderly peasants about to die and dead babies thrown like rag dolls into a pile of lifeless adults.
On the front page of The Plain Dealer's world exclusive on Nov. 20, 1969, 35 years ago today, the caption under a large black-and-white photo read: "A clump of bodies on a road in South Vietnam."
The photographs taken by a local man, former Army photographer Ronald Haeberle, and the accompanying story by Plain Dealer reporter Joseph Eszterhas sparked a controversy that eventually helped shift American public opinion against the U.S. war in Southeast Asia.
The My Lai Massacre had taken place more than a year earlier on March 16, 1968, but wasn't fully reported until Nov. 12, 1969, by Seymour Hersh. Hersh wrote for the Dispatch News Service, a nonmainstream news organization. Hawks and conservatives doubted the veracity of Hersh's reporting.
But eight days later, Haeberle and his photographs provided powerful verification of the events. The pictures were reprinted in Life magazine on Dec. 5, 1969.
On May 4, 1970, Hersh won the Pulitzer Prize for his story. That same day, four students were killed during protests at Kent State University. The anti- war movement was in full swing.
A combat photographer contacts a reporter
Haeberle still lives in Northeast Ohio but declined to talk about the pictures or his life since they were taken.
He was 28 years old and working as an industrial supervisor at a manufacturing company in Cleveland when the photographs were published.
He grew up in Fairview Park and attended Ohio University for three years before being drafted in 1966. He was assigned to the 11th Infantry Brigade. He arrived in Vietnam in 1967 and became a combat photographer. His famous photographs were taken only two weeks before he finished his commitment, left the Army and returned stateside.
At first, Haeberle used his Vietnam photographs for informational slide shows he presented to Kiwanis, Lions clubs and other civic groups. When he heard of Hersh's My Lai piece, he thought about his photographs of the massacre. He also remembered a student named Joe Eszterhas, the firebrand editor of the Ohio University Post when Haeberle was there.
He knew Eszterhas was at The Plain Dealer. Haeberle called him about the My Lai photographs. Eszterhas immediately invited him to come to the paper. The reporter knew he had a world scoop on his hands. His editors agreed.
According to newspaper reports, the Army brass found out The Plain Dealer was planning to run the pictures and asked the paper to refrain from publishing them, saying the pictures would be "prejudicial to the rights of those charged or to be charged with illegal conduct in connection with the alleged murders."
Plain Dealer editor William Ware wrote in an editorial that the paper's editors felt that readers were entitled to see the photos. The paper published the photographs and Eszterhas' interview with Haeberle.
Negative reaction
to the pictures
Haeberle told Eszterhas what he witnessed on March 16, 1968. Haeberle said he arrived by helicopter an hour after sunrise. He heard gunfire in the distant village.
"There were some South Vietnamese people, maybe 15 of them women and children included, walking on a dirt road maybe 100 yards away. All of a sudden the GIs just opened up with M16 fire. They were shooting at the people with M79 grenade launchers. I couldn't believe what I was seeing," Haeberle told the reporter.
"I left the village about 11 o'clock that morning. I saw clumps of bodies, and I must have seen as many as a hundred killed. It was done very businesslike."
Immediate reaction to the photos and the accompanying story was largely negative. Most readers thought the paper shouldn't have published them. The paper reported that 85 percent of the 250 phone calls it received complained of sensationalism, poor taste and anti-war bias. Radio talk show host Howie Lund told listeners the pictures were enough to "gag a maggot."
Within a week, however, the calls about the photos were running 65 percent positive, the paper reported.
The importance
of publishing the photos
Local author John Tidyman, who had just returned from a year serving in Vietnam, told a Plain Dealer reporter then that it was important the photos were published.
"I saw things just like that, only on a smaller scale, and it never hit the papers," he said in the interview. "It's sick and sad that something like that could happen. The whole war is sick -- we ought to pull out now, immediately, and pay the Vietnamese billions in reparations, but nothing is going to bring back the Vietnamese lives, the slaughter."
Tidyman also declined to comment for this story.
Eszterhas is now a screenwriter and author living in Bainbridge. He said the photographs had lasting historical impact.
"What gave Haeberle credibility was the fact that he was not a big anti-war guy," Eszterhas said in a recent interview. "He was just a guy who was over there when it happened.
"It set off a real negative storm when it first ran . . . but they really did help end the war. The pictures ran in color in Life magazine a month later. After those pictures ran, Americans across the country had to face the fact that we were involved in a bad war. I've always felt Americans are good people with good values. There was no honor there. People couldn't deny what we were doing."
In 1971, U.S. Army Lt. William Calley was convicted of premeditated murder for ordering the My Lai shootings. He was given a life sentence. Two days later, President Nixon ordered him released from prison and put under house arrest. Three and half years later, Calley was freed from his quarters in Fort Benning, Ga., by a federal judge. No one else was tried in the case.
Nixon was re-elected in 1972. In 1973 he agreed to bring the rest of the troops home. He resigned in 1974 after the Watergate scandal. The last American troops left Saigon in 1975.
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
mheaton@plaind.com, 216-999-4569
2004 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.
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