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.