 Here in scope of the original Army investigation of the incident, which allegedly took place March 16, 1968, in Son Mi Village in Vietnam, Lieutenant General William R. Pierce was designated to conduct the inquiry. In early December of last year, at his request, two outside civilian attorneys were made available to assist him. Mr. Robert McCrate and his associate, Mr. Jerome K. Walsh Jr. both distinguished attorneys agreed to assist as representatives of the public. Yesterday, the Pierce-McCrate report was submitted to General Westmoreland and me. It is based on interviews with some 400 witnesses, both here and in Vietnam, and an exhaustive review of files and records in South Vietnam and the United States. The testimony of the witnesses, when fully transcribed, will total nearly 20,000 pages. The report consists of 12 chapters totaling over 225 pages. Because it was necessary for the Pierce group to familiarize itself with the events leading to the alleged incident, three chapters of the report deal with those allegations. They cannot be made public at this time because of the obvious potential for prejudice in ongoing court-martial cases. Three more chapters deal with the nature and adequacy of subsequent reports and investigations concerning the alleged incident. These chapters, a summary chapter, and a chapter containing conclusions and recommendations also cannot be made public at this time because of the possible prejudice to the military justice actions against the 14 officers who have been charged this past weekend. These charges are being announced today. The remainder of the report with some minor deletions of classified or prejudicial information is being released to the public today. Ultimately, substantially all of the report will be made public. General Pears, Mr. McCrate, and their associates have worked two years old at the time their investigation began. It is clear from reviewing the report that they have done an exhaustive and forthright job. Now that the inquiry has been completed, we must continue to assure that the processes of the military justice system are permitted to operate fairly and fully. The officers charged in the past several days with failures to adequately investigate and report, as is the case with those persons charged previously with offenses arising directly from the alleged incident itself, are entitled fully to the presumption of innocence which applies in our system of justice. Finally, General Westmoreland and I particularly wish to express our deep appreciation to Mr. McCrate and to Mr. Walsh for their assistance in this important and difficult task. Thank you. It has not been an easy one. From the very start it was clear that the primary requirement had to be absolute objectivity. It was also clear that the rights of the individuals affected by the inquiry must be protected. I feel satisfied that these two requirements have been met. That they have been fulfilled is due in large part to the people who assisted me in the investigation or the inquiry. As for the military officers on the team, I deliberately avoided selecting senior colonels and general officers to serve on the team. I wanted young combat experienced officers who had seen war and anewed the trials and the pressures and the tribulations of combat first hand. To meet this need, General Westmoreland made available to me some of the most highly talented officers in the United States Army. Each of these officers is highly decorated and each has had combat experience from the platoon level through the brigade level. And all of them are recent Vietnam veterans. I would like to publicly express my appreciation to them for their highly professional and untiring efforts during the course of the inquiry. This same degree of devotion was exhibited by all of the enlisted personnel who were assigned to the inquiry team. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to the gentleman on my right, Mr. Robert McCrae and to his associate on my left, Mr. Jerome Walsh. These two civilian lawyers brought to the inquiry a breadth of knowledge and experience which has been absolutely invaluable to all of us. Their advice and counsel throughout the hearing and the long deliberations which followed were of immeasurable assistance in arriving at the difficult decisions which had to be made. They have given freely and completely of themselves. To my sincere word of thanks, I can only add that I think that they have done a great service to their country. It may seem somewhat unusual, but I would like also to thank you of the press who have been so patient and so considerate. By not putting pressure upon me for information, you've made my task easier many times over and have permitted me and other members of the inquiry to devote our full attention to the problems of the investigation itself. There were and there still are overriding considerations to protect the rights of those who were involved in the judicial proceedings. Your actions to date have done much to protect these rights, and I would hope that such would continue. On several occasions, I have been asked about what happened in its only village on 16 March 1968. I'm not going to try to characterize what occurred there. I can say, however, and I feel that the public is entitled to know, that our inquiry clearly established that a tragedy of major proportions occurred there on that date. In order not to prejudice the rights of individuals concerned, I'm unable to further discuss the events which transpired in so and me on 16 March 1968 and over 500 pieces of documentary evidence. I am sure that the report will receive a thorough review by Secretary of Research and by General Westmoreland and by the Department of the Army staff. I am most hopeful that our report, the reviews which it will receive and the actions stemming from the report itself and such reviews from it will prevent an incident such as this from ever again occurring. Thank you very much. I think Mr. McCrate now has a few words he'd like to say. You will find in the material that has been distributed to you a memorandum of mine recording my concurrence and the basic findings of the inquiry and my satisfaction with the manner in which it has been conducted. I would refer to that memorandum for a fuller statement of my attitude towards this inquiry and in the way it has been conducted. Far would you ask, answer one of the minor questions first, what is misprisoning? That's the word. It's an easy one. That is a term specially known to military justice and I would be inclined to defer to the JAG officers to give you a definition. I feel that a definition of that sort you must be rather precise in giving and I think I better refer you to the JAG officers for that. General Piers, after all this would you say that there was a cover-up in the field investigation following the Mila incident? No, I would respond to your question by saying that there was testimony and evidence to indicate that certain individuals either wittingly or unwittingly by their action suppressed information from the incident from being passed up the chain of command. General, the men charged in this incident all have been charged with pretty horrific crimes. The officers, except for the last two I think captains mentioned in your report, are being charged with much much less serious involvement in this thing. Under the principle that an officer is responsible for the conduct of these men, how do you justify this? I don't justify it frankly. I think first you must recognize that my responsibility was to investigate the incident to determine the adequacy of the reports, the adequacy of the investigations, the sufficiency of the reviews of such investigations and whether or not there had been any attempt to suppress information or to cover it up. That was my obligation, which I fulfilled when I filed the report. Now, as far as the charges themselves are concerned, I did not file the charges. These were made by a group of officers who reviewed the testimony and based upon the testimony were able to determine the charges. General, there's how many of these officers did knowingly suppress information about whatever happened to the son of a gunman that day? I don't know. You would have to leave the... You have it in here, I believe. I would hate to come up with an exact count right now, but it's in the charges that you have. General, who formally, isn't there a requirement that the accuser should be senior to an officer who filed the charges against General Foster? I don't think that... No, this is not correct. What you say. No, it is not. It was signed by, in the case of General Costa, they were signed by a colonel of the army who is an officer of the Judge Advocate General Corps and his name is Hubert Miller and he is currently the Staff Judge Advocate of the RADCOM. General Pierce, several of the officers are charged with false swearing. Do those charges refer to the time two years ago or more recent, for example, during their investigation? For the greater part, they would refer to the testimony given during the course of the inquiry. Because serious, sir, what is the ultimate sentence for the worst of them and which of the charges is the heaviest? I'm not really qualified to answer your question. I am sure that this information can be given to you by the Judge Advocate General's office and I'm sure that General Seidel will make it available to you. General Pierce, as a career professional in the army, are you disturbed at all by the fact that 14 officers, some quite high ranking in senior, were engaged in the suppression of information and false swearing and by implication in condoning this breach of the tragedy as you described it? Well, certainly I'm greatly concerned and it wouldn't make any difference whether it was, it does make a difference whether it's a general officer but I think the same criterion must be in effect throughout our entire officer corps. We all have obligations as officers and as a consequence I think that we must have extremely high standards and that we must make sure that our people, our officers stand up to those requirements. Would you say that this in effect condemns all of your officer corps since such a large group was involved? By no means. Is it typical of all the officers? No, far from it. I would look upon this from what I know of the situation as being quite an isolated incident. What is your feeling about this? What caused this? Why did we have a succession of people who suppressed information? Well there is no ready and simple answer to your question. Very frankly if you will notice in your handout there is one section of our report which is devoted to that very subject but I would be afraid that if I discuss this at the present moment that it might be prejudicial to the interest of the people involved. Mr. McCrack, could you indicate in this report where the best summary is of what you're talking about? You mentioned your conclusion. Do you have a page there that you can tell us about? Well, one question that was asked of me related to Chapter 8. I believe that General Pears has just referred to that. In addition, in Chapter 12 you will find that the findings of the inquiry are included. Now in view of the fact that those findings relate intimately to individuals and charges that have been made against individuals it is not possible at this time in fairness to the judicial proceedings that will go forward or that are going forward in some cases to make public that information at this time. I do not feel it appropriate to go into the details of that due to the possible prejudice to individual rights but there were approximately five or six who did. General Pears, is there any evidence that the type of behavior that you, these charges are based on, was more widespread than what happened that we lie on March 16, in other words, other days or other places? If there is, I have no knowledge of it. It was not brought out to me in the evidence and I personally from my roughly 30 months in South Vietnam I had no knowledge of anything that would approximate this. What about in the song Me Area on that day? That charges placed against a member of Company B who was not that me liable? This is the reason why if you read that very carefully it was expanded to include Son Me Village as compared to Me Lie 4 actually because when we got to South Vietnam we found that Me Lie 4 when we say Me Lie 4 they did not know what we were talking about. So we went to the Vietnamese officials and we got the proper names for the village for the four hamlets that are in the village and for the sub-hamlets. What really is involved you might say in Me Lie 4 encompassed several of the sub-hamlets of which Me Lie 4 is one of them actually Thuan Yen but the Bravo Company was not in that area they were in another area further to the east. But it's all within, encompassed within the greater area of Song Me Village and that's why we refer to it now as the Song Me Village rather than try to just be limited to that one little piece of terrain Me Lie 4. It appears as to your recommendations, you do not go into recommendations and find however there is one that you could discuss which would not be prejudicial to anybody and that is what recommendation do you or your board have for preventing such re-occurrences. In other words couldn't this have happened in the first place if Rittenauer hadn't written a letter and what method of internal communication is in reporting do you recommend to prevent first of all a cover-up and secondly this kind of incident at all. You will notice that there is one section of the report devoted to the laws of war and to the various regulations which were put out here in the United States by the military assistance command Vietnam. On March 16th in the said 10 days following on March 16, 1968, how far up in the Canada Command of the American Division is personal knowledge of the incidents that occurred in Song Me Village and how far out of the command is it going? The official reports which is to say the operational sit-rats which I'm sure all of you people here are familiar with which are just the ordinary day-to-day reports indicating the statistical account of how many of the enemy were killed and so forth. These were passed all the way up through the chain command and as a matter of fact to the National Military Command and Control Center. But as far as the knowledge of what might have transpired at Song Me itself, we have no indication that this got beyond the American Division itself. The people who you mentioned who took the Fifth Amendment when asked to testify, have they been charged with dereliction of duty but not with swearing to false statements or have some of them not been charged with anything? I am going to have to decline to respond to that simply because we then get to identifying individuals and as I indicated before I fear that it would be prejudicial to individual rights. Can you respond to the last part of it as to whether they have been charged at all? My question is I'm wondering if it turned out that the safest course was to refuse to testify on that grounds. I believe that each of the individuals that I can recall at this time who invoke the privilege is within a group that has either been charged at this time or previously was charged. General Pears, can I ask you a post-lawful question in a way? There are some reports, one an Australian officer may characterizing the people, the Vietnamese civilians of Song Me and the lives as being able to build bazookas at the age of four and five, six, that kind of thought. What feeling do you have about the people concerned in this apparent tragedy? Well I don't know about being able to build a bazooka four or five or six years of age but I think if you look within the history of the coastal region of Quang Nai province as well as the coastal region of Bendin province that this has a long history of communism. Actually going back to the time of 1920 and 1930 when communism was first established you might say within Vietnam. So there's just no question but what this area has a tradition for being under communist domination and it was so during the war against the French and it continued to be so when you might say the communist decided to try to take over south Vietnam and it is, it's a hotbed of communism. Has been, I must say that I had not seen Quang Nai for almost two years when Mr. McCrate and Mr. Walsh and I returned and I was tremendously impressed with the progress which has been made in pacification in that area when when we saw it at that time. General Pierce, the fact that such high ranking officers have been charged suggests that there are reports that a massacre had taken place that to be live. Were there such reports and were they physically destroyed? There was information which was available and there were failures to report. There were failures in investigation. There were failures in in reviewing investigations and these are all really part of the charges which were subsequently developed. My question is somewhat different. Was there a positive act on anybody's part to destroy or remove evidence? I would prefer not to answer that particular question if I may because I do think that by answering it that I may be prejudicing rights of individuals and general, are you satisfied that during your investigation you found all of the photographs that Ronald Haverly says he took in the area? My honest opinion is yes. Give us any idea of the dimensions of this tragedy. We've had a number of people charged with various crimes. Can you tell us how many people you think were killed? How many were raped? How many were named and so on? No, I'm above and beyond that which I indicated in my statement. I'm afraid I cannot go any further at this time. General, can you give us an idea where we stand to leave the proceedings here under U.C.M.J. and at the end of the year, do you believe your disposition of charges should not be determined at this time? Will the disposition of these charges be up to a court martial, court's martial to be yet to be maintained? Well, I think it's indicated in the handoff which you have that all of these people with the exception of two of them have been assigned to First Army, which is to say to the command of General Seaman, a Lieutenant General who will therefore have the right that based upon the Article 32 investigation to convene a court martial if the findings justify it. Will these court martial be public? I cannot answer that. Is there any time that Article 32 proceedings have been started on all these cases then? No, to my knowledge they have not. I cannot truly answer your question. You're still in the grave of getting the stage and charges have been leveled. That's right. This will be to determine whether or not an Article 32 investigation should be made. Is that correct? Well, from these will stem the Article 32 investigation and from that if justifiable, then would stem the court martial proceedings. General Seaman, to pin down one point, during your investigation did you find that any of the information about the incident was conveyed to higher authority from the American Division by back channel or by personal