The Press: Miscue on the Massacre

FT. BENNING GA. AN ARMY OFFICER HAS BEEN CHARGED WITH MURDER IN THE DEATHS OF AN UNSPECIFIED NUMBER OF CIVILIANS IN VIET NAM IN 1968, POST AUTHORITIES HAVE REVEALED.

COL. DOUGLAS TUCKER, INFORMATION OFFICER, SAID THE CHARGE WAS BROUGHT FRIDAY AGAINST 15T LT. WILLIAM L. CALLEY JR., 26, OF MIAMI, FLA., A TWO-YEAR VETERAN WHO WAS TO HAVE BEEN DISCHARGED FROM THE SERVICE SATURDAY.

So read the lead paragraphs of a 190-word news item transmitted by the Associated Press Sept. 6. It was a story that raised questions: How many civilians had been murdered? How had they been murdered? Why had Calley been charged only one day before he was to leave the Army? But perhaps because it was only seven sentences long, perhaps because it was carried early on a Saturday morning, the item stirred no special interest in the nation’s press. According to A.P. General Manager Wes Gallagher, who concedes that A.P. was “derelict” in not following up the story itself, the news service did not receive “a single call from an individual paper or from broadcasters” requesting additional information. And so one of the biggest stories of the Viet Nam War —the massacre at My Lai—remained dormant for another two months.

Fantastic Story. When the story finally broke in some detail, it was largely because of the digging of a freelance writer who, to complete his research, had to get a $1,000 grant from a foundation. Seymour M. Hersh, 32, had been a police reporter for Chicago’s City News Bureau, a Pentagon reporter for A.P. and a press secretary for Eugene McCarthy. Hersh had written a book on chemical and biological warfare, and he was working on another about the Pentagon when one of his contacts called him in Washington around Oct. 22.

“I’ve got a fantastic story,” the source said. “There’s a guy down in Benning who is being held on a charge of murdering 70 to 75 Vietnamese civilians.” Hersh put aside his book and started tracking down information that led to an interview with Calley on Nov. 9. He wrote the story the next day, and having failed to interest LIFE and Look when he began his research, decided to peddle it through a Washington outfit called Dispatch News Service.

D.N.S. was started a few months ago by two 23 year olds, David Obst, who has the title of general manager, and Michael Morrow, its only fulltime staff writer. Obst acknowledges that the service has a left-of-center tone, but he adds: “This is not an antiwar news service, but rather a pro-truth news service.” The son of a Los Angeles advertising man, Obst marketed the Hersh story with chip-off-the-old-block hustle. He sat down with a copy of Literary Market Place, which carries the phone numbers of newspaper editors, and started making calls. The approach, Hersh jokingly told him at the time, was somewhat like selling Campbell’s soup.

“I’m David Obst of the Dispatch News Service, calling from Washington,” he told about 50 editors in the U.S. and Canada. “I’ve got a story I think you’ll be interested in.” Most of the editors responded with remarks like “What’s that agency again?” Obst persisted, asking $100 if the story ran. Some 35 newspapers (including the Chicago Sun-Times, the Milwaukee Journal and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch) printed it Nov. 13.

Hersh and D.N.S. did not have the story entirely to themselves. The daily Alabama Journal in Montgomery (circ. 26,000), which had received a tip on Nov. 4, broke into print in its 2 p.m. edition of Nov. 12. And the New York Times, which got wind of the story around Nov 7, had its own report for Nov. 13. Both lacked the detail of Hersh’s piece. Hersh had quotes from Calley (“I know this sounds funny, but I like the Army . . . and I don’t want to do anything to hurt it”) and from another soldier who had taken part in the attack (“There are always some civilian casualties in a combat operation”).

Curiously, some newspapers barely noted the alleged massacre or ignored it completely. Editorial page comment was even slower to develop. The best reporting continued from Hersh. He interviewed three eyewitnesses for a second D.N.S. story on Nov. 20, and he turned up Paul Meadlo for another numbing account last week. D.N.S. passed Meadlo on to CBS for a television interview with Mike Wallace, for which D.N.S. received $10,000 and Meadlo got traveling expenses. For yet another story this week, again sold by D.N.S., Hersh has talked to a returned soldier who describes the killing of a Vietnamese woman by members of Lieutenant Calley’s platoon two days before My Lai.

One daily, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, got lucky. A returned G.I., Ronald L. Haeberle, had been attached to C Company as a combat photographer when it moved into My Lai. When the assignment was over, he turned in the black-and-white film supplied him by the Army but kept some color film he had bought himself. Back in Cleveland after discharge, Haeberle resisted showing them to newspapers until last month. Then he called an old school friend, who was a Plain Dealer reporter. The paper snapped up the photographs, ran them in black and white, and then helped Haeberle sell color rights to LIFE, the German magazine Stern, and the London Sunday Times.

The British press showed more initial interest in the massacre story than the U.S. press. So did British politicians. But while some of them used it to attack the U.S. and its involvement in Viet Nam, one left-wing Labor member allowed that it was “to its great credit” that the story was revealed “in the American press in the first place.” He was perhaps too kind.