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 prompted by the disclosure of the My Lai Massacre on November 12, 1969, by Seymour Hersh, writing for the New York Times. [1] The group was the first to bring to public attention the testimony of American Vietnam War veterans who had witnessed or participated in atrocities.
Schoenman had previously worked on the International War Crimes Tribunal founded by Bertrand Russell. [2]
The Commission of Inquiry had a policy‐making board which included Noam Chomsky, Schoenman, Dick Gregory, Melvin L. Wulf, director of the Legal Department, American Civil Liberties Union, Eric Seitz, executive secretary, National Lawyers Guild and Andy Stapp. [3]
Schoenman left the National Committee for a Citizens Commission of Inquiry on U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam in the hands of two New Left anti-war activists, Tod Ensign and Jeremy Rifkin. [2] They were joined in early 1970 by several Vietnam War veterans, including Robert Bowie Johnson, a West Point graduate and former infantry captain, and Michael Uhl, a retired 1st lieutenant in military intelligence. [4]
The National Committee for a Citizens Commission of Inquiry on U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam's first press conference was in Toronto, Canada, March 4, 1970. Ensign and Rifkin convened three more press conferences in the following two months: Springfield, Massachusetts (April 6, 1970); New York City, New York and Los Angeles, California (April 14); and Boston, Massachusetts (May 7, 1970). Uhl then traveled to Sweden and Australia to brief reporters that American Vietnam war veterans had first-hand evidence of atrocities they had either witnessed or committed themselves. National Committee for a Citizens Commission of Inquiry on U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam continued to mount press conferences in other cities, culminating in a three-day National Veterans Inquiry, held in Washington, D.C., on December 1, 2 and 3. [5]
The testimony offered by veterans at these events provided documentation that American atrocities in Vietnam were not uncommon. This evidence was a counterpoint to the U.S. Army command's assertion that the My Lai massacre was an exception. National Committee for a Citizens Commission of Inquiry on U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam leaders asserted that atrocities committed by American soldiers were a result of military field policies like "search-and-destroy", "free-fire zones" and "forced urbanization", the saturation bombing of villages believed to be controlled by enemy forces. [6] [7]
Telford Taylor, former chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials stated on the Dick Cavett Show that General William Westmoreland might be convicted as a war criminal if Nuremberg principles from World War II were applied to the Vietnam War. Taylor, himself a retired brigadier general in the Army Reserve, explained that the U.S. Army applied this standard of justice in the trial of Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita. Yamashita was convicted of war crimes and hanged for atrocities committed by his troops in the Philippines. Taylor attributed his opinion to the evidence of atrocities and war crimes offered by veterans and active-duty soldiers, who were testifying under the auspices of the Citizens Commission of Inquiry. [17]
The Concerned Officers Movement (COM) held two press conferences under the auspices of the Citizens Commission of Inquiry on January 12, 1971 in Washington, D.C., and January 20, 1971, in Los Angeles calling for an investigation into the "responsibility for war crimes of key military figures", including Generals William Westmoreland and Creighton Abrams, and Admiral Elmo Zumwalt. The Washington, D.C., COM members involved were CAPT Robert Master, USA and CAPT Grier Merwin, USA, both doctors; Capt. Edward G. Fox, a zoologist in the Army Medical Service Corps; First Lieutenant Louis Font, a West Point graduate; and LTJG Peter Dunkelberger, USN, a management systems analyst stationed at the Pentagon. [18] In Los Angeles were LT Norman Banks, USAF, LTJG Ted Shallcross, USN, LT James Skelly, USN, and LTJG John Kent, USN, an Annapolis graduate, all-American wrestler and jet fighter pilot. [19] [20] [21]
The Winter Soldier Investigation, which ran from January 31, 1971, to February 2, 1971, followed in the paths of both the Citizens Commission of Inquiry and the Russell Tribunal. This event was organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and some of its leaders have credited the National Committee for a Citizens Commission of Inquiry on U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam with establishing the credibility of veterans' voices of dissent. Internal divisions between the two groups led each to work independently of the other. [22]
The Citizens Commission of Inquiry disbanded in December 1971.
The My Lai massacre was a war crime committed by United States Army personnel on 16 March 1968, involving the mass murder of unarmed civilians in Sơn Tịnh district, South Vietnam, during the Vietnam War. Between 347 and 504 civilians were killed by U.S. 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, and some soldiers mutilated and raped children who were as young as 12. It is the largest publicized massacre of civilians by U.S. forces in the 20th century.
William Laws Calley Jr. is a former United States Army officer who was convicted by court-martial for the murder of 22 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai massacre on March 16, 1968, during the Vietnam War. Calley was released to house arrest under orders by President Richard Nixon three days after his conviction. A new trial was ordered by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit but that ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court. Calley served three years of house arrest for the murders. Public opinion at the time about Calley was divided. Since his dismissal from the U.S. Army and release from prison, Calley has avoided public attention.
The Americal Division was an infantry division of the United States Army during World War II and the Vietnam War.
Tiger Force was the name of a long-range reconnaissance patrol (LRRP) unit of the 1st Battalion (Airborne), 327th Infantry, 1st Brigade (Separate), 101st Airborne Division, which fought in the Vietnam War from November 1965 to November 1967. The unit gained notoriety after investigations during the course of the war and decades afterwards revealed extensive war crimes against civilians, which numbered into the hundreds.
Ronald Vernie Dellums was an American politician who served as Mayor of Oakland from 2007 to 2011. He had previously served thirteen terms as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California's 9th congressional district, in office from 1971 to 1998, after which he worked as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C.
The Russell Tribunal, also known as the International War Crimes Tribunal, Russell–Sartre Tribunal, or Stockholm Tribunal, was a private People's Tribunal organised in 1966 by Bertrand Russell, British philosopher and Nobel Prize winner, and hosted by French philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre, along with Lelio Basso, Simone de Beauvoir, Vladimir Dedijer, Ralph Schoenman, Isaac Deutscher, Günther Anders and several others. The tribunal investigated and evaluated American foreign policy and military intervention in Vietnam.
Mark Lane was an American attorney, New York state legislator, civil rights activist, and Vietnam war-crimes investigator. Sometimes referred to as a gadfly, Lane is best known as a leading researcher, author, and conspiracy theorist on the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy. Lane authored 10 books on the JFK assassination, including Rush to Judgment,, the 1966 number-one bestselling critique of the Warren Commission and Last Word: My Indictment of the CIA in the Murder of JFK, published in 2011.
A free-fire zone 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:
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 and their allies in the Vietnam War. The VVAW challenged the morality and conduct of the war by showing the direct relationship between military policies and war crimes in Vietnam. The three-day gathering of 109 veterans and 16 civilians took place in Detroit, Michigan. Discharged servicemen from each branch of the armed forces, as well as civilian contractors, medical personnel and academics, all gave testimony about war crimes they had committed or witnessed during the years 1963–1970.
Tod Ensign was an American veterans' rights lawyer and Director of Citizen Soldier, a non-profit GI and veterans rights advocacy group based in New York City. Ensign held two law degrees, a Master of Laws (LLM) from NYU and Juris Doctor (J.D.) from Wayne State University, as well as a BA from Michigan State University.
Ralph Schoenman was an American left-wing activist who was a personal secretary to Bertrand Russell and became general secretary of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation. He was involved in a number of projects supported by Russell, including the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), the Committee of 100 and an unofficial war crimes tribunal to try American leaders for their conduct in the Vietnam War. Shortly before his death in 1970, Russell publicly broke with Schoenman.
Michael Uhl is a Vietnam veteran, antiwar activist, critic and academic.
USNS Lt. James E. Robinson (T-AKV-3/T-AG-170/T-AK-274) was a Lt. James E. Robinson-class cargo ship, which was launched as a World War II commercial Victory cargo ship SS Czechoslovakia Victory under the Emergency Shipbuilding program. She had earlier been the U.S. Army's USAT LT. James E. Robinson before being acquired by the U.S. Navy.
The Vietnam War Crimes Working Group (VWCWG) was a Pentagon 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 and atrocities by U.S. armed forces in Vietnam allegedly committed during the Vietnam War period.
Ed Murphy is an American peace and labor activist, the founding and retired Executive Director of the Workforce Development Institute. He was a former military intelligence soldier who exposed the CIA's Phoenix Program in April 1970.
Master Sergeant Donald Walter Duncan was a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier who served during the Vietnam War, helping to establish the guerrilla infiltration force Project DELTA there. Following his return to the United States, Duncan became one of the earliest military opponents of the war and one of the antiwar movement's leading public figures. Duncan is best remembered as the cover image on the February 1966 issue of Ramparts where he announced "I quit", as well as for his 1967 book The New Legions and his testimony to the 1967 Russell Tribunal, both of which detailed American war crimes in Vietnam.
John W. Donaldson (1924–2008) was a brigadier general in the United States Army. He served in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
The Concerned Officers Movement (COM) was an organization of mainly junior officers formed within the U.S. military in the early 1970s. Though its principal purpose was opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, it also fought for First Amendment rights within the military. It was initiated in the Washington, D.C. area by commissioned officers who were also Vietnam Veterans, but rapidly expanded throughout all branches and many bases of the U.S. military, ultimately playing an influential role in the opposition to the Vietnam War. At least two of its chapters expanded their ranks to include enlisted personnel (non-officers), in San Diego changing the group's name to Concerned Military, and in Kodiak, Alaska, to Concerned Servicemen's Movement.