Vietnam War > Dellums Committee Hearings on War Crimes in Vietnam

DELLUMS COMMITTEE HEARINGS ON WAR CRIMES IN VIETNAM
April 25, 1971
Caucus Room, Cannon House Office Bdlg

Special thanks to Peter Ungar for this data contribution

DELLUMS: The hearings will be in order.

I am Congressman Ron Dellums. This is the 1st day of our mornings of hearings that will be conducted in this room between the hours of 9:30 and 12:30. This is the 1st open set of hearings on war atrocities in Indochina.

We introduced back on 3-1 of this year House Joint Resolution [HJR] 409, cosponsored by 21, fellow Congressmen.

We asked for action by the Rules Committee on this resolution and none was forthcoming. All of us are very interested in full, official hearings into the potential of war atrocities in Indochina, but receiving no action from the RULES COMMITTEE or the leadership of the Congress, we proceeded to try to plan as completely and capably as we could with these ad hoc hearings.

I would like to introduce on my far left Congressman Reuss, who has joined us this morning, Congressman Riegle from Michigan, Congressman Don Edwards from California, Congressman Badillo from New York, Congressman Frank Ryan of New York; to my immediate right Cngwmn Bella Abzug of New York, Congressman Parren Mitchell from Baltimore, Congressman John Conyers from Michigan, Congressman Seiberling from Ohio.

Are there Congressmen who have any opening statements that they would like to make this morning? Congressman Mitchell.

MITCHELL: We have begun hearings today to investigate the military policy used in Vietnam which appears to us to foster war crimes. We are concerned with such schemes as free-fire zones, search and destroy missions, mass resettlement of peasantry and the so-called "bodycount mania." Since the Dept of Defense [DOD] acknowledges the use of these tactics, we wish to illustrate graphically what happens when such tactics are translated into action. Vietnam has been called the ultimate model war of attrition where civilians die by the score for every combat soldier killed. Our interest here is in the suspect military policy, not in uncovering war tames, but it is likely that we shall hear testimony as repugnant to the nat'l conscience as My Lai.

We do not do so to demean the military or to undermine the nat'l confidence, but we must bring the nature of the Vietnam war home to the American people, for it is they in the final analysis who must reject and end it.

The men who testify before us, and I know some of them personally, display great courage, and we commend them. In order to speak about these atrocities they have discarded careers and jeopardized their future security. but they speak out of a deep moral conviction that demands respect.

This nation will be shocked by what it hears, but America will be better for having heard it. We call upon our fellow Congressman to attend these sessions and to learn from what is said here. The people are war-weary and the Congress must assert its constitutional prerogative to end the longest war in history.

This Congress has had chance after chance to end the war, and we have not done it. Hopefully these hearings in combination with all the other pressures that can be exerted, hopefully, we will then force the Congress to act and to cause it to end this bloody and immoral war in which we have been so long engaged. Thank you, Mr Chairman.

CONYERS: The statement that I would have made has been ably made by my by my colleague from Maryland. So I will only make 2 points. 1st of all, I want to emphasize that this Congress has displayed a complete lack of moral responsibility and legislative integrity in not having the courage to openly look at the actions that we are forced to do as an ad hoc committee through the failure of anyone to act on the Joint Resolution 409 or to have hearings under 1 of the several committees that this could have been done under the rules of the House. 2dly, Mr Chairman, I want to personally commend you as a freshman member of this body for under taking this very, very important responsibilities.

DELLUMS: Thank you. Cngwmn Mink from Hawaii, 2d from my far right, has just joined us, and we welcome you. Congressman Seiberling.

SEIBERLING: Yes. Today we are beginning 4-day hearings of ad hoc public hearings on policy and command responsibility for war atrocities in Vietnam. I think this forum is necessary because today, despite requests by a number of members of Congress, including myself, there have been no official hearings.

The central question to which this series of hearings must address itself is simply stated by Telford Taylor, chief counsel for the prosecution at the Nuremburg Trials, in his book, "Nuremburg and Vietnam-An American Tragedy", and I would like to read a key paragraph of that book. "The 1956 Army Manual provides explicitly that a military commander is responsible not only for the criminal acts in pursuance of his orders but is also responsible if he has actual knowledge or should have knowledge that troops or other persons subject to his control are about to commit or have committed a war crime and he fails to take the necessary and reasonable steps to insure compliance with the law of war or to punish violations thereof." The purpose of these hearings is not to discredit our military services, but 1st to determine whether there were widespread violations of law by the American military with respect to the treatment of civilians and POWs and, if so, to pinpoint responsibility for such violation.

I might say parenthetically that 1 of the chief reasons so many Americans are disturbed by the decision of Lieutenant [LT] Calley's case was that it appeared that after all the terrible events and possible crimes and atrocities in Vietnam that 1 single LT was being made criminally responsible for the entire armed services and indeed for the entire country. Obviously it is vital to bring justice not to just minor officials but those responsible at whatever level of command it may be.

Neither the military services nor the nation should have to face the world under a cloud of suspicion. The best way to prevent this is to get the facts and to take what ever action is necessary to correct the deficiencies which may have led to such violations.

1 of the most shocking and depressing aspects of the disclosures of the German atrocities after World War II was the fact that so few citizens in that great nation raised their voices in protest or even took pains to learn the truth. This is understandable in a people living under the grip of a totalitarian regime; it is unthinkable in a human and civilized democracy. We must know the truth before we can deal effectively with our nations problems.

If I could borrow a single biblical phrase to cover our nation's needs in this difficult time, it would be, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free." Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

DELLUMS: This morning we will look at policy and command responsibility, and we have with us 5 West Point graduates, 4 captains and a major. We also have Capt O'mera, who is not a West Point grad, who will be a corroborating witness with 1 of our capt's, Capt Bartek. Our 1st witness this morning will be Capt Fred Laughlin.

Statement of Fred Laughlin, Capt, US Army, West Point, Class of 1965, Bethesda, MD LAUGHLIN: I graduated in 1965, spent 5 years in the service, 2 1/2 years in infantry, 1 year in Vietnam as a company commander and as a platoon leader.

I was a 1st LT.

I would like my testimony to center more on the distortions of war and my examples to be more illustrative than shocking. I would like to give 3 examples and hope that I can--I, we can--draw something from it. When I arrived in Vietnam in 1966, in October, I was sent to a jungle warfare school in Lai Khe. Lai Khe is on the northeastern tip of the eastern triangle. I spent a week in the jungle warfare school being taught the way it really was in Vietnam by non-commissioned officers [NCO's], some of whom had been in battle themselves. At the time the BODY COUNT idea pretty will hit the military in Vietnam, and we were taught at the jungle school, that it is very important to get BC. There is a big difference between BODY COUNT and so-called killed in action [KIA].

It is very important to verify some member of the body, particularly the ears.

The ears seemed to be the favorite in order to report validly a BC. This was not promulgated officially. It could not be, of course. but this was taught in the school and it was clear to a what the sergeant [Sgt] was talking about. and these people were blank pages when they came to Vietnam, They had no idea what was coming off. I did not. I was supposed to be educated. I did not know. As far as I knew, he was giving me the straight story. The 2d example that I would like to give of the distortions in Vietnam occurred during my 2d month in Vietnam as a platoon leader. VC had reportedly run into a village, a village not unlike my Lai. We surrounded the village with our platoon and began to seal it off in the typical manner. Civilians were pouring out of the village at the time. It was late in the evening. All of a sudden, with no warning, the platoon opened up on the civilians. It was their job to keep the civilians in, and God knows where they got the order.

I was in charge, completely. By the time I could get the firing stopped, which seemed like an hour--it was probably 30 seconds--1 man was shot in the back, an old Vietnamese. We picked the man up and took him back to base camp, which was not far from civilization. It was about a 2 minutes' helicopter ride from Du Lai. The man was clearly bleeding internally and didn't have long to go. I wasn't a doctor, but that was pretty clear. I reported this to my company command, said that we needed immediate evacuation, and there was none forthcoming. The man died about 5 the next morning.

The 3d example I would like to give has to do with the distortions of a different type. It occurred late in my Vietnam tour when I was company commander, just south of the Cambodian border, about 25 miles north of Tay Ninh. It was called the battle of Prec Loc. the battle of Prec Loc is probably the only claim to fame that the 2d Battalion [Bn], 2d Infantry, had at the time, and, of course, these are things that people like to cherish: battles.

The battle of Prec Loc occurred late in the summer of 1967. The perimeter that we had, and it was 2 companies, was attacked by supposedly a regmt of enemy troops. The battle waged throughout the thing. The brigade [Bgd] commander was over my head, and over his head was a helicopter, over his head was the asst division [div] commander, the div commander was over his head and God knows who was over his head, and it was really terrific. It was just the thing you want when you are in battle.

During the night in radio conversation after the battle lulled, there was a wager made by 1 of the company commanders, the A Company commander to the C Company commander, as to who would find the most bodies out in front of their positions, a case of beer, as a matter of fact. The next morning they went out to police up the bodies. The A Company commander had 8 and the C Company commander had 5, for a total of 13, as I recall. The asst div commander landed his helicopter, surveyed the situation. It was clear to him there were 13 bodies in front of the position. He proclaimed by some strange way that I will never be able to figure out that there were 197 bodies, and that is what was printed in the paper the next day.

Now, the distortions that I described here, and I think it is pretty clear what they are, run across the board, and are a result of some type of immoral template that seems to be superimposed on the whole world in Vietnam--the whole horror, aberration, aspect, concept. These same distortions caused the general, 1 of the members of my platoon, and a Sgt at the general school, the same distortions that seem to be causing Americans to shrug now, and perhaps this is the greatest price for America.

The way I feel about it is the term "war crimes" is a bit of a misnomer itself, in that war seems to be a repudiation of all laws except those that are sanctioned by bodies. I think that America needs to undergo a bout with reality, which I hope you people can do during these hearings, for in the long run America is the one, not the people who fought in Vietnam, not the Calley's, not the Westmorelands, but America is the 1 in the long run who bas to carry this stigma. Thank you for your time. If you have any questions, I would be glad to answer them.

DELLUMS: Thank you, Capt Laughlin. I appreciate your testimony. I have 1 question I would like to ask. From where do you understand the policies that you have enumerated to come?

LAUGHLIN: I don't know. They seem to permeate throughout Vietnam, and I could not associate them with any particular source. I think they seem to be a major component of war. You are going to have these policies if you are going to have war.

DELLUMS: We will be operating under the 5-minute rule. Congressman Ryan?

RYAN: I was gratified by everything you said, Capt, and I think you have very well stated the necessity for the American people to examine themselves and the role it plays in Vietnam by representatives of the American people.

1 thing that struck me, and that was your reference to the wounded villager, that you asked he be evacuated and wasn't evacuated. Did you find or do you believe on the basis of your experience that we in Vietnam value less the lives of the Vietnamese than other lives? Did you find there was a certain amount of waste implicit in the attitude stated toward the Vietnamese?

LAUGHLIN: I would have to say we certainly valued American lives over Vietnamese.

However, I could certainly not go so far as to say the Vietnamese lives were valueless. I am afraid I can't answer it any further than that.

RYAN: How prevalent was the practice of measure the BODY COUNT by the evidence of an ear? Was that a prevalent practice? As you went from the jungle school into the field, did you find that practice prevailing?

LAUGHLIN: My units never took up this practice, and I don't now how many did.

The fact that it was promulgated in jungle warfare school I think is indicative of the feeling at the time: Okay, yes, we can't put out official policy to cut off people's ears. Our unit was guilty of throwing dead bodies on our APCs until it came down as a policy that we couldn't throw dead bodies under the APCs and parade them through town any more. That was a policy that was stopped about 3/4's through my tour. But the severing of members, I never saw it, but I heard it. It was a definite, informal, unwritten policy.

RYAN: Was the BODY COUNT exaggeration of finding 197 when there was actually 13, was that typical of the way the count was reported in your experience?

LAUGHLIN: In my opinion it was. I think the body count was used as a measure of success in Vietnam, a measure of a general's, a commander's success. They made every opportunity to get the BC.

RYAN: Thank you.

DELLUMS: Congressman Badillo?

BADILLO: The 2d incident that you mentioned where there was unauthorized firing upon the villagers, were you the platoon leader at that time?

LAUGHLIN: Yes.

BADILLO: Did you stress afterwards as to why there was an unauthorized firing on these villagers?

LAUGHLIN: No. I did not.

BADILLO: Why not?

LAUGHLIN: I don't know.

RYAN: Did it happen again?

LAUGHLIN: It did not.

REUSS: When did this incident with respect to the enemy BODY COUNT of the Able and Charlie companies occur?

LAUGHLIN: I think it was Junction City II, up Route 4 in later summer 1967.

I don't know the exact dates. I am sure the annals of the 2d Bn, 2d Infantry, will give the exact date. I would have to guess maybe the middle of September or late August.

REUSS: and these were companies A and C of the 2d Bn of the 2d Infantry regiment?

LAUGHLIN: Yes.

REUSS: and what Bgd and corps were they?

LAUGHLIN: I don't remember the Bgd that handled the operation. It was a multi-Bn operation where they are put under operational control of a Bgd commander. I don't remember which Bgd had operational control at that time.

REUSS: and you were a platoon leader in what company?

LAUGHLIN: I was the B company commander.

LAUGHLIN: Yes.

REUSS: and did you have an opportunity to observe personally the incident you described?

LAUGHLIN: I was commanding the fire base which was about a 1/2 mile from the incident and attended a staff meeting the next morning where the weapons and all the spoils were displayed from the battle. I did not participate directly in the battle that night, although there were minor skirmishes around our perimeter as a result of the battle.

REUSS: Who was the asst div commander who made the enlarged BODY COUNT that you described?

LAUGHLIN: It was a man by the name of General Hollingsworth.

REUSS: What is your source for saying he made this high BC?

LAUGHLIN: During the staff meeting the Bn commander told us at the time that it was the asst div commander's feeling that there were at least 197 bodies or 197 people killed. At that time it became very clear that was the number of people that were killed. Part of the reason I think was the Vietnamese supposedly have a habit of dragging away their dead bodies, and they found so much blood on the perimeters and somehow that gets translated into bodies. It was all quite creditable at the time.

REUSS: That is your source for saying that in fact body a total of 13 bodies were found in front of companies A and C?

LAUGHLIN: That again was a staff meeting. It was put out that 13 bodies were found. The case of beer was delivered by the man who lost the bet, and the score was tallied, and at that time even though the score had been tallied 8 to 5, the Bn commander said well, it is 197 because the asst div commander had proclaimed so.

REUSS: I am not sure I understand it. Did the Bn commander say at the Bn officer's staff meeting, 1, that the actual count was 8 and 5 or 13; and, 2, that the asst div'nal commander is claiming a count of more than 100?

LAUGHLIN: Yes, sir, to both questions.

REUSS: Did he by word or facial indication give any impression of what he thought of the discrepancy between those 2 figures?

LAUGHLIN: At the time, as I said, it was quite creditable. We all longed for success, and people in that type of situation, I would say, would tend to believe anything like that. It made us look good, and we were very happy to say 197 members were killed and somehow managed to forget there were only 13 bodies lying in front of the perimeter. There seemed to be no tongue in cheek, no raised eyebrows.

REUSS: Thank you, Mr Chairman.

DELLUMS: Cngwmn Abzug?

ABZUG: I was interested in your statement that you reported to the commanding officer [CO] the existence of this wounded Vietnamese and there was no attention paid to it. What steps did you take with respect to that? Laughlin: I reported to him personally. I reported to him over the telephone that the man needed attention. I reported later that the man needed more than just attention, that he needed to be evacuated. The commander said that they couldn't get a chopper in to evacuate a Vietnamese. So, my medic and myself stayed up with the man and did what we could for him and he lost consciousness early in the morning and died shortly thereafter.

ABZUG: Did you have obvious experiences or other experiences with respect to the handling of wounded civilians or Vietnamese? If you did, would you describe what practice was with respect to there treatment and handling?

LAUGHLIN: All other experiences that I had occurred in a village called Thanh Phu Khan, where our company was in charge of the security. It was supposedly a VC village that had been pacified. We had a great deal of association with the civilians and had built up what 1 might call an affinity. All other experience that I had with civilians had been very favorable, very good. There were a few shrapnel wounds or a stray shot or something like that went on, and it was readily attended to at the time. This was the 1st incident that I thought 1 would call out of the ordinary with my experiences. I didn't mean to go around the question. I just hadn't had any experience up to that time.

DELLUMS: Congressman Mitchell?

MITCHELL: I have a theory that the war crimes have an impact on the lives of Americans, those who committed and participated in or witnessed the war crimes, that it is impactual on their lives once they return. Under my theory it seems to me that we can break some returning veterans into 2 categories.

In the 1 category the veteran who has learned to accept violence, and, therefore, assumes a kind of hatred, disgust, and suspicion of people who are not white Anglo-Saxon partisans, the kind of thing that Calley was reported to have said from the witness stand by telling people and didn't regard them as human beings." that is 1 category.

In the other category it seems to me we would find some veterans who have been so torn, so traumatized by the experience that their own personal value system has been severely disrupted.

I shall ask each witness during these hearings to comment on both of those categories in terms of their own personal lives. What has this done to you, in terms of violence, how you regard other than white Anglo-Saxon partisans?

What has it done to you in terms of your value system?

LAUGHLIN: I find the experience in Vietnam has made me more aware of my value system, number one.? Possibly a lot of people don't think about the questions, never have been asked the questions. I can't say I however been asked the questions quite that way.

But by making myself aware of the value system, I constantly take a harder look at it, and try to setup my priorities based on the experiences to establish a value system that I think would be contributory to society, that would contribute to America as I see it.

What that all means is, A, I don't feel that my opinions toward people of another color or another race really have changed very much from when I went over there; B, I think that my attitude toward violence has changed quite a bit in that I put a stigma on the term violence, whether it is in defense or fighting against Pres Nixon or anything else. I think that violence has the stigma regardless of the truth, the objective that one is seeking.

Finally, I just think that I am more receptive to ideas as a result of my experience, because I felt Vietnam, I a felt it was right. I didn't flinch when people talked about cutting off ears. I didn't flinch at the battle of Prec Loc when people said there were 197 and not 13. So I have to be less quick to judge everybody. On the other hand, I feel that my own set of values, as I mentioned earlier, have been more closely scrutinized.

DELLUMS: Cngwmn Mink.

MINK: Thank you very much, Mr Chairman. During the Calley trial, there was reported in the papers that 1 of the underlying considerations throughout the trial was a so-called unwritten policy established by the military authorities referred to as MGR. Are you familiar with what policy?

LAUGHLIN: I never heard it expressed in that way. I don't feel that I have.

I have heard aspects of it.

MINK: In what way did you hear it expressed?

LAUGHLIN: What does MGR mean?

MINK: Mere Gook Rule.

LAUGHLIN: There were a lot of people over there who felt that people were mere gooks. that is about as ar as I can go. We had incidents where civilians were killed or injured, and there was this hope of apathy.

MINK: In issuing any orders to you and the superiors' issuance of any orders to you, was there any reference to such a policy?

LAUGHLIN: None.

MINK: No?

LAUGHLIN: No.

MINK: How do you know then that there was an unexpressed, unwritten understanding of the existence of such notions on the part of the military there in Vietnam?

LAUGHLIN: Talking. I spent 11 months on the line in Vietnam, 1 month in the hospital, and I got to know the people over there pretty well, the Americans.

And that is What I base my comment as to the aspects of the MGR, not based upon any official policy or official word that was passed down. It was based upon my feelings in talking with the people, with the Americans.

MINK: Would you say that such a notion that Vietnamese were not human or something less than human was a general understanding, generally held by most of the military personnel in Vietnam?

LAUGHLIN: It depended a great deal on the unit. the unit that relieved us had just come from the north themselves, and that was the general feeling of that unit. as a matter of fact, the 1st month they were there after they relieved us there were a number of Vietnamese killed as a result of very gross errors.

there was just no consideration to the civilians. However, in our unit, it was a different story. I felt that most of my unit considered the Vietnamese human. On the other hand, there was a marked contrast in the units.

MINK: In describing the attitudes of the unit, were you a live witness to any incidents that would verify your impression of their attitudes?

LAUGHLIN: Yes, I was.

MINK: Would you describe those incidents which you were a live witness to?

LAUGHLIN: there was 1 incident where a man was supposedly clearing his rifle and he put a little boy in his sight and killed him. I was riding by at the time and didn't see the incident. I heard a shot. As a matter of fact, I sat on the court martial and the man I think was given 6 months and he was let off over there, he was fined or something. It was very minor. This was another unit. Another incident, the night we were to leave, they assumed part of the perimeter, and we had become used to the habits pretty much of the city it wasn't a city it was a village - and 1 of the Vietnamese got up in the middle of the night to go use the bathroom or the toilet which is outside over there - only the generals have flush toilets over there--and he was shot down and killed by this other unit, where I think had it been our unit, we would have been used to the people and we knew what was coming off in the village and bad gone to fairly great lengths--this was the result again of our commander. Colonel Kahn I think was an excellent commander and went out of his way to associate with the people. The man was killed and buried a couple of days later and we left the village in the hands of these people, in the hands of this other unit. Regretfully we did.

MINK: Thank you, Mr Chairmen.

DELLUMS: Congressman Seiberling.

SEIBERLING: In this incident about the man who was shot in the back, it isn't quite clear a me whether the COs deliberately declined to call up any chopper to evacuate the man or whether you just don't know what was available.

LAUGHLIN: I don't know where the denial occurred. I wish I did. I wish I would have had the gumption to find out at the time. I can't quote verbatim what he told me except that no chopper was available, and there was some reference to the fact that the man was a Vietnamese, something to the effect that there was no chopper available for a Vietnamese or a civilian or that type of thing.

This seemed to me to be very strange, because we were using a chopper at the time in our operation, and the S-2 at the tune was flopping around above doing something, I don't know what he was doing. but it would not have hurt to drop down and pick up the man and spend 2 minutes a take him to the hospital, and in 2 minutes the S-2 could be back up.

SEIBERLING: What you are saying is, I gather this is why the incident sticks in your mind, to you a chopper could have been made available and there was some sort of at least callousness on the part of the CO?

LAUGHLIN: Yes, sir, no question about that.

SEIBERLING: We are faced with somewhat of a dilemma here, because it seems to me it is important to pinpoint the facts as much as possible and at the same time try to get some impression as to whether there was a general atmosphere of lack of concern about possible crimes against civilians or at least failure to live up to our legal obligations and our moral obligations, and 2dly, whether there was a general knowledge on the part of people at all levels of command as to these conditions that we bring up or we can bring up such lack of concern. To what extent do you feel qualified to generalize; as to the general knowledge among all of the military people that incidents of the kind that you saw and other incidents that you may not have seen were going on?

LAUGHLIN: I certainly don't feel qualified in generalizing. That is 1 of the problems that the Administration is having, probably 1 of the problems that commissions of this type would be having. I hope, as you point out, that we do in this exercise get down to the facts, not be guilty of generalizing, and I hope from my testimony that I was. You can certainly go from my experience and say this is my opinion; on the other hand, this is what I saw.

SEIBERLING: I want to commend you for your courageous statement and your very carefully sticking to the precise facts. That helps us a great deal.

DELLUMS: Thank you, Captain Laughlin. We deeply appreciate your coming forward this morning and aiding us in these hearings. I know I speak for myself and the rest of my colleagues. We appreciate your coming forth.

Our 2d witness is Mr Gordon Livingston, who achieved the rank of major, rgmntal surgeon for the 11th Cavalry Regiment in Southeast Asia.

DR. GORDON LIVINGSTON Major, U.S.Army, West Point, Class of 1960. Baltimore, Maryland DR. LIVINGSTON: Thank you. I think that we ought to take a very broad perspective in terms of what we are trying to do here today, aid in doing so I think that perhaps some generalizations can be drawn from our total experience. In a sense, a of us in this room, in a sense all Americans, are vets of this war and victims of it. Our cities are decaying; our children reject us; and there is violence in the land from both the left ald the right. I think that we who have been in Vietnam can bring you some sense and some of the specifics of what we have seen, but I do think the general conclusions to be drawn are valuable, and I won't hesitate to both draw and defend those here.

1st of all, the question of attitude on the part of Americans toward the Vietnamese people, I think is absolutely critical to any understanding of what we have done, whether we are talking about the war as a whole or individual atrocities.

The attitude of Americans toward the Vietnamese is 1 of very nearly universal contempt. This is expressed in a variety of ways ranging from the indiscriminate destruction of lives and property to the more casual references to the Vietnamese, friends and enemy alike, as gook or slope or dink, because once the dehumanization necessary to apply terms like that to another human being has occurred, then you are on your way to My Lai. I think there was very little sense, virtually none, expressed on the part of any veterans of that war that I know at the My Lai disclosures in 1969. As some examples in my experience of this dehumanization, they are almost too numerous to list, but I will give you some examples. my unit, as I said, was the 11th Armored Cavalry Rgmnt and commanded by General George S Patton, III. The emphasis in the unit, since it was a professional unit and by military professionals, was obviously heavily weighted toward those things which would advance the professional future of the officers therein, specifically General Patton, and, therefore, placed heavy emphasis on maintaining and exploiting contacts with the enemy and on achieving a high BC.

In all fairness, I think I should say as far as I know the major distortions in the BODY COUNT in our unit consisted of those who were reported killed by air, that is, there were no instances so far as I know in our unit where the BODY COUNT of the unit was distorted. There was great meticulousness to make sure it was accurate, but in the instance, for example, of helicopter pilots engaging people on the ground where it was impossible to count the bodies, particularly at night, the exaggerations were tremendous.

That is, 1 would hear of a company of North Vietnamese being wiped out by a helicopter and there would be a BODY COUNT of 100 or 150 and in the morning there would be no blood trails.

So there was obviously a distortion. but in terms of what this meant, this tremendous dedication to destruction and so on, I think it was never more evident than the night when Colonel Patton, then Colonel Patton, at the nightly briefing, said to his staff and this was at a time when he was getting some publicity in the press and on TV for his dedication to pacification, and in fact was quoted on ABC-TV as saying that pacification is my most important mission. He was able, however, to say to his staff, of which I was a member as the regimental surgeon, he was able to say the current ratio of 10% pacification to 90% killing is just about right.

That was clearly in his career what was being rewarded, and obviously this was going to be a determining factor in his behavior. In terms of the attitude award the Vietnamese, I think 1 was struck during the time of the Calley trial and during the disclosures that various members of that platoon made by the absence of in will expressed toward the Vietnamese. I think it was striking. In fact, LT Calley himself referred to the atrocity as being no big deal, and used an interesting euphemism for the word killed, which I think showed how nicely he could separate himself from it by using the term waste, we wasted the civilians. 1 does not waste human beings. 1 wastes insects, that is, things that are of absolutely no consequence. So what is staling in that attitude and in the attitude of the high majority, above 90% of the Americans with whom I had contact in Vietnam, was just this contempt, and this includes the highest ranking officer with whom I had to deal, in this case being regimental commander. An example of the distinction drawn between American and Vietnamese life, for example, just before I joined the unit, 1 of the helicopter pilots flying what was euphemistically described as a low-level reconnaissance ran down and killed with his helicopter skids 2 Vietnamese women who were riding bicycles on the roads, to give some idea of how low level that reconnaissance was. He was temporarily grounded and I had the opportunity to speak with him about that as the surgeon, and there was complete absence of any feeling other than regret that he was not drawing his flight pay, and interesting in terms of the official action taken was the fact that he was totally exonerated by a board of inquiry and returned to active flight duty. In fact, whether to describe that as intentional murder or as an accident, I think misses the point, that what is expressed there is not any particular murderous intent but just a total lack of caring about whether anything happened or not. It was routine for the pilots flying north across the Danang River, as the phrase goes, to "flat hat" the Vietnamese who were pulling their sampans along the river.

Usually the Vietnamese acted with sufficient alacrity to escape death, but not always. The business of helicopter evacuation that Fred referred to struck a responsive note. I have 2 examples of that in my experience. I was in the village in I Corps visiting with the Marines, and 1 night 7 Vietnamese were wounded by a grenade. 1 was killed and the others were wounded. There were 2 who had perforating abdominal wounds and I had virtually no facilities at my disposal to great them. It was then midnight ald I thought it was unlikely that 1 of them would survive until morning, and I requested a helicopter for their evacuation. The only question at the other end was, are there any marines wounded. When we replied in the negative, I was refused on the grounds that it was an insecure landing zone [LZ] and they would not come in.

It was perfectly obvious to me, based on experience, that mission would have been flown for a wounded American. Another example occurred in our regiment outside 1 of our night defensive positions where there was fire fight, and this was in a village a mile or so away from an American position, and 1 of the wounded was an American chaplain's asst who, as you all know, is noncombatant who was shot through the chest and somehow the message was mistransmitted so that the helicopter pilot understood that the wounded was VC.

The pilot refused to come into the LZ, and while he was being transported overland to a more secure LZ, he died.

An interesting example, 1 might call it a case of mistaken identity.

Wounded Americans, as you know, are flown directly to large military hospitals with full surgical facilities. In my unit it was the practice to fly wounded VC and NV to regimental command posts for questioning before they could be evacuated, and it was my responsibility as surgeon to provide whatever medical care I could with very limited facilities at my disposal to them while they were awaiting that evacuation.

This brought me to a constant conflict with the regimental St-2 or intelligence officer in the unit, who was virtually never satisfied that he had achieved all the information possible from the POW, and it was only by the flat statement that the POW was likely to die in front of him that I was able to achieve evacuation.

I took this problem with one badly wounded POW directly to Col Patton in the hopes that his intercession would allow me to evacuate this man who I felt very badly that he needed surgery. Patton's reply was a flat statement, which I remember very well, that my job was just to keep that man alive for a few moments so he could be questioned, and after that he could die, it didn't matter to him.

The pervasiveness of the attitude of the Americans over there is, I think, the key to this understanding. That is, what I am trying to do is not point to General Patton as an ogre or somehow uncharacteristic. I am trying to illustrate that the attitude is so widespread that there are none of us here in this room sitting comfortably talking about this issue who faced with the situation themselves could, I believe, with certainty, predict how they would react.

I was never more impressed by this than by the involvement that I found within MITCHELL: You actually never witnessed that?

LIVINGSTON: I actually never witnessed that, although there have certainly been a number of people at various tribunals who have testifyed that they have. There is no doubt of its existence in my mind.

DELLUMS: Congressman Conyers.

CONYERS: I want to comment, Major Livingston, that your statement has been more helpful in putting this in perspective than any I have heard before or during these hearings so ar, and I am impressed with the insight that you have shown about bringing the American people to a fuller realization that it is more than a matter of relating fatalities and the incidents and so forth and so on. I think this committee, by virtue of its being formed, is trying to raise the level of intelligence of the Congress, of government, and, of course, most importantly, the American people. So I see in your testimony an element of courage, and I think it gives us the encouragement required to honestly view this. We are not dealing really in secret matters that need to be revealed in great detail or that we have to go around pretending that there is a question of fact as to whether or not there are these kinds of things going on in Vietnam, and indeed probably have gone on in all wars.

The real question that this committee poses is to ask ourselves as citizens, as human beings, isn't it time we faced the hell of war, isn't it time we adjust ourselves to the fact that war itself is a crime, and can't we as a people muster the courage to say and ultimately do something about it? It is in that sense that I am deeply grateful for your testimony.

LIVINGSTON: Thank you.

DELLUMS: Cngwmn Mink.

MINK: I have just 1 question. In your description of the physical torture of these Vietnamese, do you know of any instance in which the superior officers made any effort to stop this practice and to restore sanity to the level at which these activities were being conducted?

LIVINGSTON: Yes, sure. In the instance that I cited, when sufficient question was raised with the acting regimental commander who was present at that operation, it was stopped. However, I think it is significant that it was stopped on the basis that it was an unproductive method of interrogation rather than with any sense of it being immoral or inhuman or a violation of the laws of land warfare.

Yes, sure, I think particularly in those instances in which publicity is an issue, that is, if the press are present or if there is any indication that this might get out, there are efforts and there are lots of noise made about treating the civilians humanly. In fact, every American, when he arrives in Vietnam, is given a small card of, I guess, 11 rules on what not to do to Vietnamese and to POW's and so on. What is bizarre is the dichotomy, the difference between our protestations of what we are doing there and what our intentions are as opposed to what is actually being done. This is the thing I found so striking.

So it does no good a say we are there to insure the Vietnamese people the right of self-determination a in act we are killing them in large; numbers and destroying their society and displacing them and so on. The absurdity, for example, of dropping 5 million tons of bombs on a country that we are attempting to defend, I think is so patently obvious that only by an intense denial of what has happened can we be persuaded to live with this. So what I think is so prominent in the alienation of the young people today is, perhaps less accustomed or less indoctrinated in the ways of a technological society, they have looked upon Vietnam and seen not only the moral corruption it represents but its essential absurdity, and so have reacted against it less intellectually than just sort of visually.

I think in doing that they have taught us all a lesson in politics, and also a lesson in ends and means, perhaps, that 1 defends himself not by the ends he promotes but by the means he uses.

I think all this has been illustrated for us in Vietnam, but has direct application to this country, and I would hope we would learn from it.

MINK: Thank you very much.

DELLUMS: Congressman Seiberling.

SEIBERLING: Thank you, Mr Chairman. Have you any evidence, Major, that Colonel Patton's attitude was shared by other officers of similarly high position?

LIVINGSTON: I can say that certainly we were visited regularly by General Abrams. It is very interesting if you are fascinated by military dynasties, it is quite interesting to note that General Abrams was a company commander of General Patton, and Colonel Patton achieved command of the 11th Armored Cavalry Rgmnt, which was the only independently operating regiment in Vietnamthis was a plum -largely through the intercession of General Abrams, who is now his patron. Colonel Patton had his set of patrons, his set of up-andcoming young officers in the unit who reflected his society.

General Abrams was a frequent visitor to the unit. I never heard General Abrams sanction anything that could be described as a war crime, but he certainly complimented the unit frequently on its BC, and he came to award General Patton a Distinguished Service Cross for gallantry.

We were under the operat'l control of the 1st Div, and certainly the div commander came down frequently and complimented the unit on what it was doing.

So, I think that what is important in psychological terms, people perform in a way that is reinforced, and What was reinforced in that unit was a dedication to destruction. So, when I would say to get a helicopter, for example, for, let's say, a young Vietnamese boy with a cleft palate to get him evacuated where that could be treated, you know, the priority with which that mission was treated was I think very strong evidence of what we were really about there. So it is very broad.

SEIBERLING: I would like to get back to my specific question, and maybe I could raise it this way. You see, it is very possible when General Patton sad your job is to keep those POWs alive only long enough to have them interrogated and then let them die, that this is a direct violation of the Army manual which makes the CO responsible for observing the Articles of War and the other obligations to protect civilians and wounded POWs and so forth.

So, that is 1 issue.

But what I am concerned about is not only did it happen in this case, but whether this was the attitude of other COs of similar or higher ranks. It just seems to me this is the crux of this whole hearing. I am interested not in the philosophical overtones of it for purposes of this hearing, although I am interested in them as a legislator, but I am interested in whether or not Patton's attitude was typical and, if so, whether or not you have some other evidence of that.

LIVINGSTON: Well, no, not specifically, except in the sense that--I never heard another officer of equivalent rank make a statement like that about the treatment of POWs, nor did I hear that specifically sanctioned by any of Patton's superior officers, no. But the fact looking operationally at what has happened, it is obvious what the attitude was. but I have no more specific information about that.

SEIBERLING: On these atrocities of POW's and similar atrocities, to what extent were such incidents not made the subject of specific Army inquiry or court-martial? In other words, we have had some testimony about inquiries such as the helicopter pilot who ran down the 2 women. If it was invariably the practice to investigate all such incidents and have an official inquiry and possible court-martial, then to that extent the higher-ups were performing their obligations. But it was not the general policy to do that, then we have dereliction possibly, and I would like to get your feelings as to what the normal policy was on this type of situation.

LIVINGSTON: Well, the normal policy was simply not to investigate. Most of the incidents which would be described as war crimes and so on would occur at a relatively low level. There may or may not be senior officers somewhere in the vicinity flying overhead and so on. But the impulse both to cover up anything that might prove embarrassing, again with career motivations, or perhaps even more strikingly the impulse to ignore or not investigate possible explosive kinds of things like that is very great indeed.

Again, it is characteristic not just of the large US Army, but any large bureaucracy. Obviously, there is no future in a 1st LT reporting that an adjutant unit has committed a war crime. There is nothing in it for him except perhaps a good deal of trouble.

I think if 1 examines the whole history of the exposure of the My Lai incident, 1 sees this thread of covering up running through, which makes some sense in terms of the individuals concerned but very little in terms of the war.

SEIBERLING: So What you are saying is the system itself tends to discourage the assumption of responsibility for preventing this sort of thing?

LIVINGSTON: Yes. In other words, the system is so large and so well organized that even an individual who finds what is happening to be morally repugnant in some way is led to question his own values. This is true of anybody in a pathological association environment. The question always raises, am I crazy or i going on here crazy? when it is so large and so we organized as it is in Vietnam, it is very hard for an individual to assert himself.

SEIBERLING: If you were organizing the Army in the light of what has happened, have you any thoughts as to how we could restructure things and redo directives right down to the rank and the so that we would force incidents of this type to be reported and responsibilities to be assumed to correct this before they get out of hand?

LIVINGSTON: No, because what you are doing there is focusing on things like procedures, you see, or you are focusing on-you know, deal have been some proposals that what we need is more training in the laws of land warfare at West Point or more training in basic training so that people don't do this.

But you accept my hypothesis, which is what we are doing there is in no way different than what we do everywhere, then, obviously, the problem lies much deeper. The problem is not a lecture that you give somebody saying it is wrong to kill civilians. The problem is by the time the young men get to Vietnam, they are well accustomed to dehumanizing other people, and when we step off that plane and hear the civilians referred to as gooks and see how technologically underdeveloped they are and develop a contempt for them and so on, then the problem is not within the organization, it is not an organizat'l issue, the problem is very much within what one might call the consciousness of the people who are participating.

SEIBERLING: but we had an inspector general's organization that was today divorced from command responsibilities and answerable to a separate unit, would this help?

LIVINGSTON: I doubt it. The reason I characterized the participation as being so broad was that it involved not just the situations, as I have told you, but let's say the civilians who were in Vietnam in large number, that is, working for USAID and so on. They themselves were not immune from these same sorts of things. Again, I think the problem does not lie in some sort of reorganization. I think the problem lies very much with changing the conscience of society about this.

DELLUMS: I would like to acknowledge the presence of Congressman Koch of New York.

KOCH: I want to commend those of you who have a worked so hard and have persevered so long in your endeavors to get a public hearing. There are very few people who would have worked as long and as hard as you have and ultimately obtained this hearing. I am also distressed that the armed Services Committee hasn't provided the kind of hearing which would have permitted you to state your positions before a group of members who were not already of the position that the war in Vietnam is immoral and unconstitutional. So in effect, while it is true that in this case you have very sympathetic cgmn listening to you, I think the Armed Services Committee would have rendered a greater service to the country a they had permitted you to tell your stories before them in an atmosphere where there would have been greater examination and cross-examination and subpoena power that we don't have available to us, and it would have provided the country with an insight into a problem that it unfortunately has been shielded from. Notwithstanding the fact that our hearing will not provide the same kind of forum for you and is the kind that they would have done, I am pleased to be a part of the hearing and to be with you today.

MITCHELL: Would the gentleman yield, Mr. Chairman?

KOCH: Of course.

MITCHELL: While I completely agree with you, I would like to point out that in my mind this committee serves as that initial function of getting this testimony together and perhaps moving us to what really ought to be done in the Congress.

KOCH: I agree with you. It may be what we are doing here today will cause the Armed Services Committee to hold hearings so that ultimately they can bring in legislation on this matter.

DELLUMS: Thank you, Congressman Koch. That is precisely 1 of our reasons for being here. We certainly plan to make this testimony available to the Armed Services Committee, and I am hopeful that after some careful scrutiny, they will do precisely that. Dr. Livingston, I think it is rather obvious from the comments and the questions that we deeply appreciate your coming forward this morning and the articulate nature of your presentation. I would like to thank you on behalf of myself and my colleagues for your courage and integrity in the presentation. Thank you very much.

LIVINGSTON: Thank you.

DELLUMS: Our next witness this morning is Captain Robert B. Johnson.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT B JOHNSON Capt, U.S. Army, West Point, Class of 1965.

JOHNSON: Because the 3 men who follow me have specific testimony about war crimes initiated by 2 generals, I shall be very specific and very brief.

In 1965, I was taking a class in West Point on land warfare, even by a major who had returned from Vietnam after being wounded, and he showed us the slides and told us in a joking way how American pilots and other pilots in Vietnam would send each other parts of VC bodies--heads, angers and ears--as jokes, wrapped as Christmas presents.

He also told us a good way to get POWs to talk was to take 2 up in a helicopter and throw 1 out, and the other talked immediately. He said it in a very serious vein. I rec'd no meaningful instruction whatever on the law of land warfare while I was in West Point. I did not know what the law of land warfare was until I returned from Vietnam in 69.

I arrived on 3-1-68 in Vietnam. I became the adviser for the 1st Bn of the 25th Inf Div. We took a POW, 1 of the lead companies, took a POW. He was brought back to the Bn command 1st, which was mobile. He came back beaten very badly already when most of the men in the HQ's Company continued to beat and kick the man almost to death.

When it became time to remove the POW to a regimental command post, I had to take him across the river. In the middle of the river, he was thrown out and shot to death.

The reaction when I talked to my colleagues--I was present while the whole thing went on, I was the senior officer there--the reaction of the people there on the base camp was, we, this thing happens all the time, and after all, Asians know how to treat Asians. Another occasion, about 2 weeks later on a combat operation, about 20 miles south of Danang, we took a number of POW's again, and 1 of the POWs we took was wounded.

Before we left, the Bn commander, Vietnamese Bn Commander in my presence, took out a .45 and shot to death the wounded POW.

While our operation was going on, which is about 2 to 5 miles south of Danang, 90% of the surrounding countryside was a free-fire zone. It was understood by me, by all of us in tactical Operations Center and elsewhere, that we were allowed to shoot anything that moves in that area.

We had preplanned and random strikes going into the surrounding countryside on a routine basis. In the afternoons, 1 could hear the strikes on 1 particular place, Barrier Island, coming in about every 5 minutes. Artillery was shot randomly into the surrounding countryside. On 1 of our 1st major combat operations, we bombed, strafed, hit with artillery, a particular village complex for approximately 3 hours, and then moved up. When I got to the village, there was nothing there but civilians. I only went through a very small part of the village. All I saw there were civilians.

It became clear to me that harassment and interdiction of was not designed to interdict the enemy, but rather to terrorize and intimidate the surrounding villagers in an effort to get them to move into detention camps along Route One.

We dropped leaflets in much of the surrounding countryside to thousands of people. On 1 side of the leaflet I remember there was a picture of a B-52 bomber, and the other side said in Vietnamese, "Come to the New Life Hamlet, Come to peace, freedom and justice." Of course, the message was clear to the people in the countryside: leave your homes or we will kill you. I guess I participated in about 13 search and destroy operations. On all these ops we systematically destroyed every home and every bit of rice that we couldn't carry in civilian villages. We could not burn the hooches, we would blow them up with dynamite. As I said, we did this on a routine basis. It was part of the policy again to encourage the civilian population to move into the detention camps controlled by American and Saigon forces.

I can remember 1 particular detention camp near Danang that struck me, 1 of the camps where these people were moved in great numbers, and we were near the river at Danang and having a barbeque, cooking steaks and eating, and right next to us was a barbed wire detention camp. Inside of it were mainly children, and we would throw them bits of steak and throw candy and they would fight for it inside this detention camp.

But it became clear to me after my career in Vietnam, that our aim was to separate the people from the guerrillas, thereby eliminating the guerrilla source of strength.

It became clear to me that the FREE-FIRE ZONES and the search and destroy tactics were we systematically destroyed villages and routinely bombed the surrounding countryside, it became clear to me that we were waging war not against any abstract ideology, but waging war against the Vietnamese people themselves. Again, 1 more point on the POW issue.

I got kind of the same response when I talked about killing of these POW's in my presence. It was, well, they would have gotten worse treatment back at provincial HQ's anyway. What are your questions?

DELLUMS: Thank you very much, Capt Johnson. You enumerated several types of tactical field policies in your testimony this morning. I just have 1 rather broad question to ask. Could the war in SEA have been fought without having to resort to these types of tactical field policies?

JOHNSON: I don't think so. I think that when one is faced with what is essentially a people's struggle to gain social justice and independence, that the only thing we have available to wage war with is our massive technology.

Of course, there is no cross-communication between American and Vietnamese. When massive technological firepower is applied to what is more or less essentially a people's struggle, when you drop bombs--by the way, in the province I was in, at least 40% of the civilian population was formally dislocated into these detention camps.

When you apply these policies to what is essentially a people's struggle, I think the immediate result must be My Lai and wanton disregard for human the, and especially waging a war against a whole people and a whole culture.

DELLUMS: Thank you very much. Congressman Ryan?

RYAN: You said it was understood in that fire zone, anything which moved was to be shot. How was that understood?

JOHNSON: We, I just understood it.

RYAN: Was . . .

JOHNSON: Pilots understood it fast.

RYAN: Did you fire in a FREE-FIRE ZONES as you understood it at the true?

JOHNSON: I think my 1st initiation to it was on the map, whoever was briefing us when we came in, showed us where we were. "These are the secure hamlet areas. the outlying areas here you see on the map are enemy territory, FREE-FIRE ZONESs.

If these people were not enemy, they would not be out there. If you see them, they are the enemy." The air controllers had the understanding. many times-I remember 1 particular place, Barner Island, where people would wave the South Vietnamese flags at the pilots before they came in with the bombings, and we regarded that as a hoax on the part of the Nat'l Liberation Front to prevent us from bombing it.

RYAN: l7nat I am getting at is, was the air power a used indiscriminately?

JOHNSON: Yes, air and artillery power.

RYAN: That about are by individual soldiers in the infantry to civilians?

JOHNSON: We, that was a little different aspect of it.

RYAN: In what way?

JOHNSON: Rifles don't cause anywhere near the destruction that a bomb causes.

It can easily destroy a whole village. If the bombs didn't destroy the village, when we go through the villages on sweeps, we would destroy them by hand, by are, by the dynamite we carried. A foot soldier was used as another means to terrorize the inhabitants of these villages, to force them to move into detention camps.

RYAN: Were foot soldier used to kill civilians with weapons?

JOHNSON: I wouldn't say that the foot soldier was used to kill civilians.

RYAN: Were not soldiers to kill any civilian who moves?

JOHNSON: I think it was understood that you can shoot anything that moves, and it would be justified. when we arrived at some of our objectives, some of the villages, we clearly recognized some older people, some children, and we asked them to come down. Had they been in the distance, running off, making strange movements, I don't think we would have hesitated.

RYAN: Is it your testimony you would not have shot at point-blank range, women and children?

JOHNSON: No, I never saw that done.

RYAN: Was that policy? To shoot at point-blank women and children?

JOHNSON: No. but I think in some cases, like in My Lai, it was the inevitable consequence of certain policies.

RYAN: In other words, it was natural to know from the policies that were being pursued?

JOHNSON: Yes. I never heard an order, "go out and kill civilians." Rather, the orders are, get a big BC, search and destroy; all you are in a free-fire zone, you can shoot anything that moves.

RYAN: Thank you.

DELLUMS: Congressman Koch?

KOCH: I have met the captain on prior occasions, and I would just make this comment, and that is, he has always been very careful never to overstate on any of the occasions I have met with him. I have been impressed with his testimony before and I am this morning. I would like to ask you this question.

You had reference to advice as to how you dealt with POWs to make them talk, and I think the reference was to throwing a POW, at least 1 of them, out of the helicopter for the purpose of impressing others that it was to their advantage and their-at would keep them alive. Did that kind of incident ever occur in your presence?

JOHNSON: No, it did not. I just personally witnessed the brutal beating and subsequent murder of 2 POWs. but not throwing them. we didn't have any helicopters.

KOCH: The brutal beating, did you describe that this morning?

JOHNSON: Yes, the 1 POW who was captured and brought back to the command post was continually beaten and hit with rifles and so on until he was almost dead. There he was killed by a soldier standing on the side of the river.

KOCH: Subsequently to that beating, or during the beating, was any report made a a higher officer?

JOHNSON: I made a written report. 1st, let me say I gave ITA the underlying attitude. We kind of joked about it. I called in to the major, who was the senior adviser, who was controlling this particular operation.

He heard a shooing. He wanted to know what had happened. I said it was the change in the "status" of 1 POW. His response was, "I understand." KOCH: Was it by a change in your attitude on your part that you came to realize that this kind of conduct was wrong, at a later date, because, wasn't it incumbent then to press the matter with the Army and the regular channels that are provided, as limited as they are?

JOHNSON: I made a written report, and I wasn't morally outraged. I made an objection we could have gotten some valuable information from the man. Again, it was pointed out to me he would have under gone worse treatment at the provincial hq's, anyhow. A whole lot of different things changed my attitude to it, my coming to the realization that we were winning war against the Vietnamese people. It was a very slow, gradual process. I don't know what the key to my change of attitude was, exactly.

KOCH: If I might just pursue that, do I understand, then, because of the nature of the indoctrination that you and others had at the time you came to fight in Vietnam, that this kind of treatment was not something that you thought of as immoral at that particular moment, and it was a question of a change in your attitude and the attitude perhaps of others, that brought you and others to the realization that what in fact was taking place, was criminal in nature but at the time it was talking place, because of your indoctrination, you assumed it was principal, is that a fair statement?

JOHNSON: I would say so. At the time of the torture and the murder of the POW, and the murder of the other POW, and when we were killing these civilian hamlets, my moral kame of reference wasn't, it is wrong to kill POW's, it is right not to. My American of reference was, we are in a combat zone, this is real war, and we have got to get information from POW's.

KOCH: Did there ever come a time when you filed a report, oral or written, which set forth the fact that a war crime had been committed in your presence?

JOHNSON: No. I never really understood the term "war came." KOCH: Terminal action, 1 that you thought has violated whatever rules there are in the operation of war?

JOHNSON: No, I never did.

DELLUMS: Thank you very much. Congresswoman Abzug.

ABZUG: Have you in your experience had any contact with arms of tactical warfare ever utilized against civilians?

JOHNSON: CS gas was used on the surrounding hamlets in the free-fire zones, and there was a lot of defoliation going on, but I was not a personal witness to any of it.

DELLUMS: Congressman Conyers.

CONYERS: Chairman, can I pursue an important question raised by Congressman Koch?

I think it is important that the Capt has stated that he had undergone a change of attitude. I would like to ask a question. Is there any impression on your pat about more servicemen having a change of feeling in terms of Vietnam vets that are participating in the war protests and other like yourself moving forth?

With the activities that are going on in military units that began to demonstrate, it would seem to me that there is a conscience surfacing among many of our military personnel that began to address themselves to this question.

JOHNSON: I think that based on my experience, my level of awareness of what is happening was a year ago when I went to Vietnam, and it gradually increased.

I think because of the length of that war and because many people here in the States talk to the Vietnam veterans now and find out what is happening, many more peoples' awareness is raised before the fact, not after the fact, like mine is. I think in Vietnam today there is a general trend--the hostility which has been traditionally directed against the Vietnamese may still be there, but the hostility the GI now has is directed toward a new target, the officers.

I think there have been hundreds of cases of fragging incidents in Vietnam. I think there is a tendency to focus on a new source for the outlet of frustration of the GI in Vietnam.

CONYERS: Thank you. Do any of the other witnesses have any observations on this question?

LIVINGSTON: Yes, I think it is part of the general rise in consciousness of the whole of the United States in regard to the war, and it is certainly reflected in the military. Just as an example, at Ft Bragg a couple of weeks ago I was talking to some people who were undergoing riot control training preparatory to possible deployment in the demonstrations last week, and their estimate was between 30 and 50% of each unit in the future would participate in that sort of thing. I think there is very definitely a change.

LAUGHLIN: I don't think there is any question about it. I was struck by the fact that during the interviews that were conducted through the veterans here last week, almost to the man they testifyed that they had not undergone some kind of dramatic change, it had been gradual and it had been fairly deeply seated. Of course they had lost a lot of friends, and we all have, we all have, very close friends we love, and it is not something that 1 can kind of wrench out of one's mind, but it should be noted that we did and people are doing that, and almost to a man each man testifyed it was a slow process.

CONYERS: Thank you very much, Chairman.

DELLUMS: Cngwmn Mink.

MINK: Thank you. Captain Johnson, in the Calley trial, 6 of your fellow officers found LT Calley guilty of premeditated murder of 22 Vietnamese civilians. We have to assume from all the testimony and evidence that has been put forth in the trial that these civilians had been captured and were in effect POW's of that unit that had captured that village.

You made a statement that in your opinion the My Lai massacre was the inevitable consequence of certain policies. Would you specify what policy you make reference to with regard to the killing of POWs?

JOHNSON: 1st, the underlying rational policy, that is, that the only good gook is a dead gook. Very similar to the only good Indian is a dead Indian and the only good nigger is a dead nigger.

I think LT Calley took it quite seriously. 2dly, the BC, with BODY COUNT your success. After a, General Koester got credit for the BODY COUNT in Vietnam, 128 dead and only 4 weapons captured. General Westmoreland sent a telegram to the commander of the My Lai massacre. So the BODY COUNT had that input.

Next, the search and destroy policy. With me, I couldn't help but somehow view these Vietnamese as a little less than human when we went in and destroyed their homes. They weren't really homes, they were just hooches. I wouldn't have had the same zeal if we were destroying red brick homes or split level homes in suburbia.

Next is the FREE-FIRE ZONES concept, which leads to the understood policy that in that area they are a enemies and they should be removed. Another policy is to force removal of the civilian populations. We have 5 million refugees in Vietnam. whether we have gone in and forcibly moved them out with marches and helicopters or we have arced them to move on through saturation bombers is immaterial. They are all means to obtain the same end, forcibly remove the civilian population. Given those policies, it is my judgment that things like My Lai are inevitable.

DELLUMS: Congressman Seiberling.

SEIBERLING: Captain Johnson, I am quite impressed with the precision of your statement and the clarity with which you thought this thing through. I just have a couple of questions a highlight this. You say you made a written report of the incident of the beating and the murder of the POW. Was any action ever taken after the report was filed?

JOHNSON: Absolutely none.

SEIBERLING: Do you know of . . .

JOHNSON: The colonel didn't call me to talk about it. I received no reply.

SEIBERLING: Do you know if he received the report?

JOHNSON: I am not sure. I assume he did. I put it SEIBERLING: You talked about the purpose of the FREE-FIRE ZONES. You have mentioned the fact that the FREE-FIRE ZONES and the harassment and interdiction fire at villagers were obviously designed to force the villagers to leave and go to resettlement areas. Did you ever hear anyone in a position of rank indicate expressly that was 1 of the purposes?

JOHNSON: No, I did not, because a few months after I left there was a big report in Stars and Stripes, 1 area very close to us, having got 12,000 people, there was a whole operation planned where all of them at once were forcibly moved to detention camps, not by the bombings but by U.S. Marines and the ARVN troops forcibly removing them to these detention camps. That happened in June, 1968.

SEIBERLING: Did you ever hear of the expression "turkey shoots"?

JOHNSON: I have heard the free-fire zone referred to by the pilots and other people as "Indian Country." SEIBERLING: But you are not familiar with the expression "turkey shoots"?

JOHNSON: I am familiar with it, but where I was operating I didn't hear anyone personally use that term. We used the term "Indian Country." SEIBERLING: What did "Indian Country." refer to?

JOHNSON: I guess it means different things to different people. It is like there are savages out there, there are gooks out there. In the same way we slaughtered the Indian's buffalo, we would slaughter the water buffalo in Vietnam.

SEIBERLING: Was there any indoctrination, official or semi-officially, that incorporated the ideas that these people are gooks or that the only good gook is a dead gook or similar philosophies, or was this just something once you got there you picked it up from the other people who bad been there?

JOHNSON: I just picked it up from other people. Before I went to Vietnam, I remember 1 adviser who had been there before and had been through some tough straits telling me you can't trust any of these. That was not official policy.

I don't think you could find it anywhere that you can't trust the gooks in writing.

SEIBERLING: Do you have any evidence that this was so widespread that it must have been known to people at all levels of command?

JOHNSON: I don't have any specific evidence except my 6 months in the infantry div, an American unit, and the disdain and disgust of the Vietnamese was extremely widespread there.

SEIBERLING: Thank you. I think your statement has been very, very helpful.

DELLUMS: 1 of my colleagues here has asked that I ask you to clarify 1 particular point. In your original testimony you related an incident of a person being beaten and shot. Can you tell me whether he was beaten and shot by South Vietnamese or American forces?

JOHNSON: He was beaten and shot by the South Vietnamese in my presence and the presence of another American.

DELLUMS: Do you think it would serve any purpose to prosecute high-ranking military personnel and civilian leaders for war crimes in Southeast Asia?

JOHNSON: If we are going to prosecute LT Calley, then I think we ought to prosecute a number of generals and a number of civilians. I think LT Calley should be freed and that a massive investigation into the institutional causes that in my judgment led to My Lai is the only solution. Retribution is no answer. Again the idea of guilt, there were so many GIs that served in Vietnam, that they were guilty on their part is kind of absurd because they never thought about guilt, anything like that. They just did what they were told in Vietnam, and they followed the policy set at the highest level.

I think the solution is the kind of thing we are embarked on. I think I would like to see someone introduce legislation calling for amnesty for everyone and then a full open inquiry by the entire Joint Congress of War Crimes, war crime responsibility.

Dellums: Thank you.

CONYERS: That is a critical point, and I am glad the captain made it, because I am coming to understand the complexities of this problem a little more deeply, that is to say, that if we are to feel that every--of course, everyone who commits a crime, it doesn't matter what your state of mind is when you commit it, but at the same time we are to really get at the bottom of this problem, it can't be a matter of trying to determine who in the service is responsible for which acts. I think that the notion that has been put forward here in this gentleman's statement, the 1st time I have heard it, that there ought to be some kind of amnesty so that everyone can come forward and give us the kind of records so that we can go to the institutional charter of the problem that is under examination by your Committee would begin to make sense. It is complex. We are certainly not trying to open this up to prosecute anyone. At the same time, we have got to hear about crimes so that we can assess what their relationship is to what is going on in Vietnam and in America.

So, I welcome the captain's suggestion on this point.

DELLUMS: Thank you, Congressman.

SEIBERLING: May I be permitted to comment on that, Mr Chairman?

DELLUMS: Yes, I would like both Cngwmn Abzug and you to make a brief comment on that.

SEIBERLING: I just want to say it is even more complicated than that, because, as I understand internat'l law, it is beyond the power of the US to waive the provisions of the laws of nations which make it a crime to execute and maltreat civilians. I am not even sure we can declare amnesty even a we wanted to. It may, as a practical matter, be possible because I find it difficult to conceive of anyone other than American courts ever bring Americans to trial in such cases, and yet from a legal standpoint, I don't think we could take that position. So, it is an extremely complicated situation. I just make that point for the record.

DELLUMS: Cngwmn Abzug?

ABZUG: Many people agree that the nature of the war in Vietnam itself is war against the people of Vietnam, and insofar as that is so that the policy of goV't, our government, and the policy of command has been essentially to wipe out the people in Vietnam. However, Captain, within that you have testified and others have testitied here and elsewhere of other people killing POWs and many of the people who have testitied have not testified that they have killed POW's. Within the acts of individuals, there are moral judgments that are made. I wonder, because I think you and I have discussed this before at a press conferences announcing these hearings, I wonder if you, in the course of your service, made any moral judgment to kill innocent children, women, old men, as did LT Calley?

JOHNSON: My hands are clean, you see, because I had a radio and could call in napalm strikes.

ABZUG: You mean you instructed other people to do it?

JOHNSON: I just called in air artillery stakes and they did it. That was part of the policy.

ABZUG: You see, I am not in complete agreement with you. I think that we a know that those responsible for killing innocent civilians probably go up very high on the ladder of the chain of command, but in the testimony and in the activity of men in the Army are those who made a moral judgment to kill innocent victims, and those who made a moral judgment not to, and I don't quite understand whether you treat all acts or not all acts the same or whether you are suggesting that we do apparently? Is that your recommendation?

JOHNSON: I think, given the framework of genocide in Indochina, where we have killed millions of Vietnamese and there are 5 million refugees, it is somewhat absurd to focus on the guilt of any particular individual. When 1 talks about guilt and innocence, it must be from a kind of moral civil righteous position, perhaps with a lack of understanding of the atmosphere that exists, the moral America of reference that exists in Vietnam, and that if 1 can say waste dinks, there no longer is a moral America of reference, there is no longer a moral judgment. If we prosecute LT Calley and we are vigorous about that, we must be just as vigorous about prosecuting Colonel Patton, now General Patton, and from the testimony of the following West Pointers, we must prosecute 2 other generals. I don't hear the same outrage about their conduct. Although they have generated policies which have resulted in de facto genocide, I don't hear the outrage about bringing those men to justice and that I hear about LT Calley and how awful he is.

I see LT Calley as the ultimate institutional victim in this country, the man who thought the whole methodology hook, line and sinker--the man who believed that the only good gook was a dead gook.

ABZUG: There are many who believe that the generals you mentioned and officers should be prosecuted. Would you oppose that?

JOHNSON: Yes, I would. We would learn nothing from it. Again, we would be focusing on the guilt of Westmoreland. Westmoreland doesn't know what guilt means. Westmoreland is in to killing Communists and accomplishing his mission and getting a lot of medals.

He didn't say to himself it is wrong to saturation bomb these people. It is his right to get out of Vietnam and make a moral decision. His framework was simply, it is right to win this war, it is wrong to lose it. That is all.

People can see how Westmoreland and Nixon have institutionally victimized men to believe their own rhetoric. People seem to fail to see how LT Calley is the ultimate victim of the institutional structure of this country.

ABZUG: We, I think that is at the highest levels of the civilian and military leadership in this country. my point is it serves no purpose to prosecute these men, because after aIl, we prosecuted individuals instead of focusing on the root causes of fascism in Nazi Germany and 25 years later the same rules of land warfare that were violated by the Nazi's are now being violated by our country. So what good are the principles? they didn't attempt to make a search and examination of the institutional forces.

LIVINGSTON: The responsibility is with us.

DELLUMS: Congressman Ryan has a brief comment.

RYAN: I simply have 1 comment, and it is this. I do not agree that individual accountability should not be fixed or where there have been violations establish a legal process of the rules of law or a military code. I think they still have to be made to believe that there were those who killed innocent children and those who did not. I think the credibility is a very important matter.

DELLUMS: We are going to divert from the format that we have used earlier.

We will have 3 Capts make brief opening statements, and then we will question them as a group, and that will be Capt Greg Hayward, Capt Ron Bartek and Capt O'Mera. We will begin with Capt Hayward.

STATEMENT OF GREG HAYWARD Capt, U.S. Army West Point, Class oS 1964. Washg'tn, DC HAYWARD: I graduated from the military academy in 1964 and spent 6 years in the Army as an infantry officer. I had 2 tours in Vietnam. my 1st tour was in 1966, and I was a platoon leader for 6 months and a div commander's aid for the 1st div commander and returned to Vietnam in '68, where I was a company commander for 6 months and General Williamson's aide.

He was the CG to the 25th div for my last 6 months in the country.

I would like to tell a few personal experiences and relate them to a policy perspective and then talk a few minutes about some of the questions that have already been asked. We had an area that General Williamson considered a thorn in our side. It was called the Citadel area. It was the home of about 200 to 300 Vietnamese. We had a fire support base called Persian where your 2nd Bn, 12th Infantry, was, and General Williamson decided we were to systematically remove these people from there homes, so we could expand the free-fire zone around the FSB Persian.

We did this by having ambush patrols at night in a the road networks leading in and out of the village. 1 of our units was given the mission to remove the villagers, the civilians from this area. They went through with armored vehicles and started burning these homes and burnings the villages in the Citadel area. The CG's guidance was not, of course, to go through and burn the ho much pressure on the commander of this Bn to perform we and to accomplish his mission that I am sure in his mind that anything went.

This was a dear violation of the rules of land warfare, forcibly moving the civilian population from their homes.

Another instance, specific instance of a violation of the rules of land warfare was when we planned the artillery bombardment of a hospital installation in Cambodia. We had a FSB called Diamond, 2,000 or 3,000 meters inside South Vietnam from Cambodia, and it was there as bait, you will, because that was when we got our best BODY COUNT ratios, when we were attacked a night on our FSBs and we were successful in luring the enemy across the border into attacking us, and we had preplanned artillery are on the 9th VC's div hospital complex in Cambodia. The plan was, should we not need all our air power and artillery power to protect the Diamond are support base, that a portion of that would be allocated to are into Cambodia on this hospital complex--another clear violation of the rules of land warfare.

Now, every soldier who goes to Vietnam is issued a little pocket-sized card, and in many units he is fined if it isn't on his person at all times. Should an inspection come up, he is fined if he doesn't have this card. Listed on the card is the manner in which we are to treat civilians, the manner in which we are to treat POW's. We systematically remove these people from their villages. As you have heard in other testimony, we don't treat our POW's very well, and we are bombing hospitals, which is in all of our lectures and training that we might have had in terms of what goes in warfare, we know that also is a violation. These things added up, you know, in the subjective minds of our soldiers is a dehumanization of the Vietnamese.

Another specific incident, as a company commander in November time frame of 1968, my company was a mechanized company, we were sweeping a road south out of Dau Tieng toward another Bn's base camp. On this sweep we came through a village where we had an ambush patrol the night before from a platoon, from the 1st Bn, 27th Infantry, whose base camp I was sweeping toward.

I found 10, at least 10-plus civilians, women and children, burned to death in their homes in that village, and asked the platoon that was still there what had happened, had they had a big fight the night before? They hadn't. Not a shot was fired in anger from the enemy, but this platoon leader had called in white phosphorous mortar are that night on this village, and he had done it because he saw people moving in the village at night. People get up out of their homes at night just to go to the bathroom. He had his ambush adjacent to this village, and if he did see shadows moving in the village at night he felt because of this BODY COUNT mania, because of this FREE-FIRE ZONES kind of attitude, that he was justified in firing mortar are into that village, which be did. I reported this to the Bn commander, to his command post at 1st, 27th, when I reached it later that day and then saw a systematic effort to hide this atrocity, if you will, and that was because I think that loyalty to your commander is often a greater value than truth in Vietnam. Certainly this LT wasn't being protected, but that Bn commander was being protected when this didn't reach Bgd, it didn't reach the press, it didn't reach the div level, and it never did.

We had in the div and I came across a man named Capt Phelps at 1 time, by reputation only, as a company commander, and we had something in the div called Phelps' Bandits.

This was a platoon organized supposedly from former VC, and they had a great reputation as to getting POWs to talk, and their reputation was in sort of the Project Phoenix Program where we eliminated the VC infrastructure by finding who the VC were in the villages and hamlets, and these people would go in at night and kill them or take them away.

As an aide to the div commander, I ran across Capt Phelps whenever he would come back to the div base camp Cu Chi, the div commander, General Williamson, would invite him as his personal guest that night at the meal.

I did not know of any personal atrocities that Capt Phelps did or didn't do.

I am not sure he did any. His reputation is great, and it is odd that the div commander would give so much prominence to a young man who had this kind of reputation of gaining information from VC at any cost he didn't support this kind of action. I wanted to talk just a moment about Congressman Ryan's question about treating the Vietnamese as less than human. I think several things add up to this. We speak of this constantly in derogatory terms. We relocate them, as I mentioned in the Citadel instance. We give them less than adequate hospital care. We don't call in medevac helicopters for them unless there happen to be also wounded Americans.

We have this great emphasis on BC, which our generals are promoted on, and generals who do not produce BODY COUNT are not promoted, and when we intentionally violate the rules that we have on our MACV cards that outline how we are to treat civilians, that when you add up a these things, none of them singularly represents a policy of treating the Vietnamese as less than human, but when these are added together, they definitely represent a policy of treating the Vietnamese a less than human. Congressman Ryan also asked a question earlier about BODY COUNT and the distortion of BODY COUNT figures. 1 incident occurred in our Bn when I was an aide to the div commander. Our 3rd Bn, 22nd Infantry, had not been getting the BODY COUNT that the other Bns in the div had, and General Williamson told that Bn commander, LT Colonel Carmichael, that he had better start producing or we would get a Bn commander in that Bn that could produce.

Colonel carmichael got the message loud and clear. Approximately 2 weeks later his firebase was attacked. He called in that night a BODY COUNT of 312 and he had taken 1 wounded. We flew out the next morning, I flew with General Williamson the next morning. We landed and counted the bodies around the parameter of that base camp, and there were 30-plus North Vietnamese bodies and a few wounded POW's.

General Williamson questioned him a little bit further, and said I understood you have 312 BODY COUNT and I see 30-plus here, where are the other bodies? Colonel Carmichael then gave a vague estimate of, we I had an ambush patrol in a particular location on the map and they saw 100 VC moving across an open field that night in preparation for attack and we called in s lot of artillery are out there, and we counted those 100. He gave instances like that which amounted to 312. It was obvious to everybody that was a lie. but General Williamson had put so much pressure on the colonel to produce the BC, the man had no choice. He is 45 years old and he probably has 2 kids to send to college, and General Williamson, recognizing that he bad placed this pressure on the Bn commander, accepted this lie.

There this thing becomes circular. In addition to that, that figure had already been reported to II Field Forces, to LT General Ewell, who had programs being promoted on the "BC mania." General Ewell was the div commander of the 9th div in the Delta. This div amassed an unsurpassed record of BC, and it was based on lies. And everybody in the unit knew it. He would claim kills at night with his sniper teams armed with infrared scopes at 600 meters. You can't kill somebody at 600 meters at night with a rifle unless you are very lucky, and a you could, you can never tell whether it is a civilian or a soldier.

General Ewell was promoted above several officers to the job of Field Force commander, and he used the term not an Indian hunt, but he used the term "killing fish in a barrel," and that is how he described several operations, and I personally heard him talk about "killing fish in a barrel." We put great emphasis on this BC. It seems ironic that General Ewell is our military representative to the Paris Peace Talks. It is hard to understand that he can deal in good faith across a bargaining table now when he made his reputation as an American in Vietnam killing Vietnamese; that he can in good faith bargain. I don't think he is that sort of diplomat that we should have.

DELLUMS: Capt Bartek.

STATEMENT OF RON BARTEK Capt, West Point, Class of 1966. Washg'tn, DC BARTEK: my name is Ron Bartek. I come from a military family and graduated from West point in 1966, went into the infantry and spent 3 years in the infantry, 1 of which was in Korea, and then spent 1 year in Vietnam as an infantry officer and as an intelligence officer. I was intelligence officer for an infantry Bn in the 25th div and then as intelligence officer and briefing officer at div headquarters. I would like to relate 3 incidents which I observed while in Vietnam which indicate to me the level at which these policies and attitudes are created which lend to and promulgate the atmosphere of My Lai and which create a basic conduct of the war which is inconsistent even with our stated objectives in Indochina.

These incidents are, 1st, a commanders' conference by a high-ranking officer, the 2d is an incident of the bombardment of an enemy hospital inside Cambodia that Greg has already mentioned, and the last is an incident of an electrical torture of a man suspected to be a VC sympathizer. The 1st incident really points to the BODY COUNT mania at a very high and revealing level, I think. General Ewell, the man mentioned already, was 1st the commanding general of the 9th Infantry div and then went up to II Field Forces.

His 1st commanders' conference at the 25th Infantry div I was sitting in on.

At that conferences he had the div commander, the Bgd commanders and all the Bn commanders, and I was representing my Bn commander. He spent about 30 minutes giving his formula for success. He began by saying that his unit was only killing, and these are his words, only killing 2,000 of these little bastards a month, and that they were infiltrating 4,000.

Consequently by the end of that month, which I believe was February, 69, he wanted to begin killing 4,000 of these little bastards a month, and then by the end of the following month wanted to kill 6,000. Now, this is at a time, as I said, 1969, when we had officially steered away from our concept of a military victory and started emphasizing pacification, and yet there was no mention of either of those 2 programs.

He gave further guidelines as to how we hoped to kill that many of the little bastards, and also loosened up the reporting procedure considerably. The guidelines he gave was any effort to mass enemy forces into 1 location where we could use our massive firepower. The loosening of the reports came when he said that no longer would you have to put your foot on a man's chest or, as was mentioned earlier, cut off a man's ear. If you put a lot of firepower into an area where you observed an enemy soldier and you swept the area later and you could not find him, you could assume that he was dead.

This led to 2 things. 1st of all, the great pressure on the subordinate commanders. As I said, all the subordinate commanders in the div were there.

To produce that massive figure for BC, plus this loosening of the report, lent to a legitimization of the falsification of reports.

General Ewell to the div commander gave a quota for that month and for the following month. When it filtered down through the Bgds and to the Bn and the Bn level, I had to tell my Bn commander when I went back and briefed him that we had to kill 50 by the end of that month. We did not have a since major fire-fight that month, and we had a legitimately counted 3-body count, and yet I was told to report 50, and I did.

That shows you if you multiply that falsification of 3 to 50 by the number of Bns in Vietnam or under General Ewell's command, you can imagine what kind of reports Congressmen and senators and the President have to go on in forming policy. It also lends to the dehumanization of the Vietnamese people and obviously id. As Greg said, this man is now our chief military adviser to the Paris Peace Talks.

An extension of the same BODY COUNT mania came at the FSB Diamond action which my Bn established that FSB near the Cambodian border as bait and we were told if asked by newsmen or anybody from the States why we were there 3,000 meters from the border, it was to protect the poor, innocent farmers to our rear and of course drew chuckles from all the Capts and the majors in the briefing. But it was obvious, and it was part of the plan, that we were baiting the people from the sanctuary zones which we later went into.

The hospital was about a mile 1/2, as I recall, inside Cambodia. We had very hard intelligence indicating where it was. It was "an underground hospital, as Greg mentioned. We predesignated fire support from the div level-- this is a major general allocating out his resources-- for the bombardment of that hospital, and Capt O'Mera and I both recall reports coming back in as to the destruction of that hospital. The last incident I would like to relate is that of 1 that has been alluded to several times, and that is the torture of POWs. I do not find it strange to see us torturing POWs in Vietnam.

When I went through the Rangers' School at Fort Benning--this was in 1966--I was submitted to about 7 hours of torture myself as part of the program.

Having been captured by the guerrilla, the jungle guerrillas which are actually Vietnam veterans, I was submitted to being staked out, and the methods have already been described, having a cloth with a little wire embedded in it forced over my nose so I could not breathe through my nose, and 5 gallons of water used to pour down my throat when I tried to breathe through my mouth.

There were other methods I was stripped naked and led to believe I was going to be hung.

For 7 hours this went on. As I stated, this was Vietnam veterans with the stated objective of teaching me that every man can be broken. This was obvious specifically in Vietnam.

I did witness an old Vietnamese man brought in by the Bn commander. He had been picked up in the area in action but was unarmed himself and in no other way implicated than his proximity to the action. I was told to interrogate the man. I had a Vietnamese interpreter and talked to him. I was convinced after 15 minutes' interrogation that he was an innocent civilian. I told my Bn commander that. He said, "What did you do, just talk to the man again?" Because I had done similar things before. 'I said, "Yes, I did." He said, "I want you to go back there and interrogate him," and the implication was clear because we had talked about this before, as I said.

I went back in the bunker and just talked to him again and reported once again that he was an innocent civilian. He was not satisfied with that, and he wanted the Bgd intelligence team to come out. This is the LT Col talking to me. The Bgd intelligence team came out, this team worked for a full colonel. The 1st thing they asked for was the field telephone, the type of field telephone that has 2 hot terminals. You connect the wires and you can talk. In this case the hot wires were connected 1 to the man's groin and 1 to the small of his back; his hands and feet were both tied. Right out in the middle of the FSB, right next to the Bn commander's headquarters, in full view of all the American soldiers on the FSB, the man was subjected to torture for about 15 minutes, at which time that Bgd interrogation team determined he was an innocent civilian. The man was released and sent back to his village, I am sure not with very kind words for American involvement in Vietnam.

I would like to address just 1 point that Parren Mitchell from Baltimore brought up, and that was what effect the brutalizing of the war has on Americans. We have to all assess the effect on ourselves, and we can feel, and I have talked to others about it, the subtleties that have creeped into our own minds and into our own emotions when we look at a Vietnamese. There is a certain repulsion there. Certainly we are intellectually committed to erasing it, but it is a difficult thing to do. That was again the effect of the policies in Vietnam.

Finally, I saw it work on a classmate of mine, a man I had graduated from West Point with. I met him in a helicopter 1 day returning from an operation.

I recognized him. He was piloting the aircraft. I said, "Hello, Jim, how long have you been in the country?" He said, "I only have 2 weeks left." I know his wife and I knew he had a son. I said, "I bet you the very happy to soon be going home to your wife and son." He said, "You know, I thought about extending here." I asked him why.

The reply was, believe it or not, "Well, I really the killing gooks." That was a man of probably greater intelligence than myself. So those are the 3 incidents, and really I see them as bringing up to me the fact that the basic conduct of the war in Vietnam is not what the American public dinks it is.

Was are not protecting anyone from anyone else. Was are brutalizing Americans, we are brutalizing Vietnamese. Was have been illustrated by the political/ military realities of Vietnam into adopting measures, like free-fire zones and search and destroy, that brutalize Americans and brutalize Vietnamese rather than admitting our mistake and righting it.

DELLUMS: Thank you very much, Capt.

Capt O'Mera.

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL O'MERA Capt, US Army O'MERA: My name is Mike O'Mera. I was in Vietnam from January, 1969, to February, 1970. I had the rank of Capt.

I resigned my commission January 20, 1970, when I returned from Vietnam. I worked in the Tactical Operations Center of the 25th Infantry div at Cu Chi from April, 1969, until I departed Vietnam.

I can corroborate Ron Bartek and Greg Hayward's testimony concerning the BC.

I will go briefly into that, because I was responsible for receiving reports from the Bgd, posting them on the maps in the Tactical Operations Center, briefing the div commanders, the Bgd commanders, the general staff once a day and passing these reports on to II Field Force, General Ewell's HQ's, Having served in this reporting chain, I personally know of many instances where the BODY COUNT was inflated.

But I think we have to understand why this BODY COUNT was initiated, as Capt Bartek so ably stated. The only measure of success in Vietnam at this time seemed to be BC, and the command emphasis on body count was so tremendous it was felt very much at the lowest level, that is, the company level.

Due to this, you have Bn commanders, Bgd commanders, and we had a div commander who had no alternative but to send their men out every single day, in many cases on night combat patrols, for the purpose of making contact with the enemy. This everyday routine I am convinced led to hundreds of poorly planned, poorly executed and ill-conceived operations of the men on the ground. I say poorly executed not in any way to be derogatory to the man on the ground, the infantry man, or the platoon leader or the company commander such as Capt Hayward was.

I can say this because when you send a man out every single day, a certain amount of fatigue sets in, he becomes careless, and all he is a walking target. When you send a man into areas that are booby trapped, and we all know that booby traps are a tremendous killer in Vietnam and have killed a great number of men in Vietnam, you then begin to wonder of the advisability of sending men out every day who are obviously tired and who are not careful and cautious.

But there was no alternative. The Bn commanders had no alternative, the Bgd commanders had no alternative. The div commander had no alternative because he was told to produce BC, and the only way he could do it was to make their ground units as bait.

They made their ground units bait by sending them into the swamps, into the jungles, into the rice paddies where they would search for the enemy and at night set up a night logger or a combat patrol position, and from this position they were most likely to be attacked. This is where the enemy would most likely hit them. They were bait. They were there strictly to make contact with the enemy and hopefully not take any casualties, but unfortunately in every 1 I can ever recall they did take casualties and great BCs did come from it.

As Capt Bartek stated, we drove to Diamond, a few kilometers inside Vietnam along the Cambodian border. I refer to Capt Bartek's reports. As I should have done, I did, I passed it along to II Field Force, and the div was thoroughly commended for its fine effort.

The same as far as FSB Crook. I refer to that report from Capt Hayward.

Eventually the 3rd of the 22nd Infantry reported 400 people killed in FSB Crook action, which was a complete distortion. Yet it was a lie which was accepted because there was just no alternative. There were several ways to increase the BC. 1 was by just increasing the sum just making it up.

You have a contact, you fire artillery, you have some air strikes, and you call in 50 BC. Another way, you come across the graves and you call in the number of graves you find. If you come across dead bodies, you count dead bodies. You sweep the area, recount the numbers, double it, and call it on in.

1 of the most flagrant violations I saw in the reporting chain, there were radars, PPS-4 radars, PPS-5 radars, and ANTPSY 125 radars at the various FSB's and patrol bases in the 25th Infantry div. These radars are operated at night and they detect movement.

we would reference reports constantly and it was usually a 2d Bgd policy that I know, they would detect 20 to 25 persons, perhaps it could have been trees moving--it could never be substantiated--20 to 25 persons stationary, no less.

Artillery was fired and the Bgd would report 12 BC. It was practice for them to take half the number on the radar screen and count it as BC.

The next day when troops would sweep the area there would be nothing then.

Yet this was accepted and it was good, because the pressure was on and this is what they had to do. This was the only way they could come up with it.

I could recall a sign in the Tactical Operations Center on the side of the map that read "Contact - Happiness is Heavy Contact." There was a little caption, a beautiful drawing of some bombs bursting. That was the attitude, happiness was heavy contact, because contact led to BC.

The thing which seems so terrible to me was the fact that the lives of Americans were placed 2d to enemy dead. BODY COUNT meant more to commanders than the lives of Americans, and when this I believe takes place, when they are used as bait, when they are not used to get intelligence targets but just out there hoping to be fired upon, how can you expect a GI to feel-what can he feel toward the Vietnamese when he knows what he is being used as and how he is being manipulated?

CONYERS: Could you ask the gentleman to yield for just a moment?

DELLUMS: Yes.

CONYERS: I would like to caution everyone giving testimony here to be as careful as they can not to make statements of fact about assertions which they cannot prove, because it will not help the purpose for which these hearings are called. That is to say, unless we can demonstrate some evidence that we know how a general felt or what his attitude was or what his motivation was, it perhaps makes it more difficult for us to arrive at facts that will lead us to accurate conclusions.

O'MERA: I apologize for--I guess I can say these are my personal observations from briefing the div general every day for 7 months while in Vietnam.

I regret the fact that I could see what was important, and what was important was BC. And the committee may also wish to look into further I believe Americans killed in action, the figure which we have become accustomed to, seen once a week. It is now down to about 50 men dead, which is all right to the American people. It was policy in our div that if a man could make it to a hospital--in other words, he could be immediately evacuated to a hospital and a he was alive at the hospital for a minute, 5 minutes, then he was listed as died of wounds. He was not listed as killed in action. Whenever there was a contact, we had 5 men killed, 35 men wounded, some of those wounded are going to die. You may wish to look into the fact these men who died of wounds, are they currently included in the number of men who have died in Vietnam, as the men who are killed in action in Vietnam.

They were not reported as KIA because it lowered our BODY COUNT kill ratio, and ideally it was 30 to 1. The Americans could kill 30 enemies, and then we could lose 1 man. That was the ratio.

I know Capt Bartek and myself, we both tried to find out if men who died of wounds were eventually put on this list. We called the hospitals concerned.

To their knowledge, they were not. We called II Field Force, and to their knowledge the men who died from wounds were not tallied on to the KIA.

I appreciate the fact that I was able to come. I came at the last minute for corroboration of some testimony, and I THank you for the opportunity to say a few words.

DELLUMS: Thank you.

I would like to thank all 3 of you. I think your testimony has been extraordinary and opens up a whole range of questions obviously. We are caught in a time bind, having to end this particular day of hearings by 1:00. I would just remind my colleagues to use some discretion in the amount of time.

I would like to ask Ron Bartek 1 question. You mentioned in your testimony very specifically General Ewell. The question I would like to ask is, what do you think should be done about General Ewell at the Paris Peace Talks?

BARTEK: As Greg mentioned, I can't see how a man with his attitudes, with his basic perspective of the Vietnam War can be an asset in the pursuit of peace.

I am sure the North Vietnamese there know about General Ewell. I mean, we have got leaflets and so forth with our generals' names on them quite often.

So, I don't see how a man can be there in pursuit of peace with his attitudes, and I don't think he should be there.

DELLUMS: Congressman Ryan.

RYAN: You spoke about, Capt O'Mera, the need to maintain contact in order to be sure that there was some North Vietnamese killed and that in your judgement it was more important to have this BODY COUNT than to protect American lives. To what extent would you say the United States soldiers who were called upon to go out and set up these positions at night in order to attract an attack so that they could then kill the enemy, to what extent did the soldiers themselves come to believe, if at any point they did, that they were being placed in a vulnerable position simply to satisfy some kind of statistical requirement and not to satisfy a real military requirement, and if they came a this conclusion, what was the effect on them and there performance and so forth? Do you understand the gist of my question?

O'MERA: Sir, I can't answer that specifically, since I was sitting behind a desk and maps don't fire back. I did not get to talk with that many infantry men on the ground. I did, however, come very those to specialist Sgts who were pulled out of the field and put on the desk jobs to handle the various paper work involved in the reporting requirements. And speaking directly with these individuals, they were, 1st of all, shocked at the attitude at the div level for the man on the around. In other words, there was an inane joy in the Tactical Operations Center whenever there was a contact. And these men regretted the fact once they were at the div level and could look down and see what the attitude was when they were out there in the field, they regretted it very much, and they were very sorry for it.

HAYWARD: Sir, I would like to comment on that just a moment. General DePuy in 1966, I was a junior aide to him, he received some credit for being the 1st commander a use this particular technique in terms of the troops, feeling that they were bait, in essence. He sent his cavalry squadron down a road called the Minton Road and we replanned artillery are, and we told the Vietnamese that we were going to send an engineer company down this road to repair a bridge because we felt if we told the Vietnamese that the word would get to the VC. Instead of sending an engineer company down the road, we sent an armored cavalry squadron down the road. They were attacked by 3 regmts of the 9th VC div. They took serious casualties, but we got a great BODY COUNT because of our present position, our air, and 4 maneuvered Bns around this site.

The troops in that armored cavalry squadron suffered a great morale setback.

I think that was getting to your point, how do the troops think about their use in this. 1 of the Diamond actions--there was a Diamond I, 2, 3--one indicator of their morale as being used for bait may be that 3 bunkers were over-run with men smoking marijuana in them and nobody on alert at all. The whole unit was demoralized, and I think to a great extent because they felt they were just being used as bait, to lure the enema across the border.

DELLUMS: Congressman Koch.

KOCH: Just a brief observation, because we are running out of time here as we have run out of time in Vietnam. What interests me is, and I have no reason to doubt the statements made by our officials that the North Vietnamese have come into the villages and sought to slaughter the leaders, the infrastructure in the villages, and we in turn have done the same according to your testimony, and I have no reason to doubt that.

It just should make 1 aghast at the savagery that the Vietnamese people have had to submit to on the part of the North Vietnamese cadres, doing what you have described we are doing, and between the 2 of us, we are wiping people out, and it is outrageous.

DELLUMS: Cngwmn Abzug.

ABZUG: In your experience of describing meetings with COs outlining policies you described, in your realization that some of these problems were wrong, how many others in your grouping would you say agreed with you or had this realization in your class officers?

BARTEK: I would say it was very low. I can remember the 3 of us reacting in similar ways in that same div HQs. I can remember observing the same glee, though, of the general atmosphere of the div HQs when we got a telephone call saying there was a unit in contact and there was a big fight going on.

I can remember talking to the people in my Bn about the brutalization of the war, and the only favorable responses I got were from the Bn chaplain and oddly enough from 1 artillery officer that was working with us. I sensed very little sympathy from anyone else. In fact, I sensed a good deal of hostility from other officers who thought I was leaving the mainstream of the Army by not wanting to participate fully in the war, and they thought I was a little bit less than heroic and so forth. I would say that our reaction is in the minority.

HAYWARD: I would agree with that at the time. Recently I have received 4 calls from classmates of mine across the country, all of whom are still in the Army and who plan to make a career in the Army. They were sympathetic.

Many of them were trying to find grounds of agreement. It wasn't a hostile atmosphere at all. I expected that. I expected to really have to back my position and fall back on small talk so that we could end the conversation pleasantly, but that wasn't the case. They were sort of searching for an agreement. It is surprising, but most of people all entered the conversation with, be careful what you do, I don't want to see you get hurt. For instance, if you ever want to get a government job, 1 of them told me, that requires a security clearance, you probably won't get it. They failed to see the irony.

They believe the myth that we are fighting in Vietnam for a democracy and for freedom of speech, and yet they themselves fear speaking out where they come back to this country that is supposed to stand for that ideal.

LIVINGSTON: I saw the same thing. I saw and sensed hostility there, but since being back I have received several phone calls from classmates giving sympathy.

JOHNSON: These 3 men can corroborate the plan by the 25th Infantry div staff led by Major General Williamson to bomb a hospital in Cambodia. Talk about killing helpless people! Where is moral outrage? Where is the demand that General Williamson be put on trial? It is kind of ironic that we are able to pass by this systematic destruction of helpless people and yet focus on a man like LT William Calley.

RYAN: The response to that is that there is evidence to be established against those who are responsible.

CONYERS: I merely wanted to thank all of the witnesses for their specific and detailed purpose that brings us here today, and I want to applaud your integrity and courage.

DELLUMS: Thank you. I would like to make 1 brief comment to the press. We have made every effort, the Congressmen, staff and volunteers, to make these hearings over today and the next 3 days highly creditable, and the DD-2 14 separation papers of the witnesses are available to you for your own inspection.

I would like to then thank all of you gentlemen for coming forward and testifying. I think Congressman Conyers has already stated the feeling of the Chair and the other members who joined us this morning our sincere thanks for your integrity and courage, and making the very specific kind of testimony and in dealing with us philosophically as well.

DELLUMS (HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES) WAR CRIMES HEARINGS
4-28-71, Washg'tn, DC
Testimony Of Daniel Barnes 1/20 Bn, Americal Div

BARNES: My name is Daniel Barnes. I lived a life like any other normal kid. I quit schl in the 11-grade for some unknown reason and instead I went into the Army when I was 18. The idea I had was that my brothers had been in and they had served and they didn't say too much about it so it was a usual thing like following the country and following the family tradition and so on. So I went in with the idea of going into the Army that it was more of a privilege rather than more of a sacrifice, which is what it turned out to be.

I went in with the respect for it and so on. After getting through basic training where the main word was, "Kill Kill," all the time, they then pushed it into your head 24 hours/day.

Everything you said - even before you sat down to eat your meals, you had to stand up and scream, "Kill," before you could sit down and eat. Which I didn't think was very right.

In 3-69 after a 10-day leave they graciously gave me I went to Vnam and was assigned to the AmcalDiv and I went through the training schl that Gary was talking about before. I can recall some things that he was saying about how there was no dink like a dead dink. All the things they were talking about, and still the constant push for, "Kill. Kill. Kill," all the time.

You run into things that you don't like or you don't want to do. But this was the war.

So you would follow this all the way through. Then I was 1st assigned to Alpha Co and I was in the field for a month during which I saw nothing, I was just traveling from here to there. Then I was like drafted for the recon cmpy, to go into the 4/2 I in about May. Now when I 1st got into the recon cmpy, they had a patch on their clothes that some of them wore, I would say the old-timers that had been in the country longer, they wore a patch of a VC, and it was yellow and black and it was showing a VC in the midst of an explosion. But anyway, most of the guys wore them which, to me, didn't seem right. But when I went there I saw there was a Bn, and it had a chart there about the VC kills and how many kills each had, and recon was the highest in kills of all the cmpys that I had seen there. So I figured that I was probably going to run into a lot of action and that type of thing.

About in August 1 nite we were stationed on a hill 15 miles south of Duc Pho, just below a vill. We were there to watch the vill to see if there were any people coming in and out of the vill during the nite. For some reason the people that worked during the day had left about 5 o'clock. They all went home someplace else so there was supposed to be no 1 in the vill that nite. That nite they had spotted with the starlight scope, a nite device used to spot people or any object, but they spotted 2 people crossing the road into this vill. They called in the mortars immediately, which is about the same thing as arty batteries. But they fired approx a 4-round barrage, which was unnecessary, but they did it anyway. Besides being off target they burned about 4-5 hooches during the nite. The next morning the whole platoon moved across and down the hill and on across the road to check out this vill and we went in and checked it out and we couldn't find anything. No bodies. No blood. Nothing. Just a couple of burned-down hooches. Well, we reported this to the LT and his exact words were, "Leave nothing standing.

Burn the whole thing down." So we made torches out of rags and sticks and we used gasoline and we started burning the hooches down. By this time the people that were in the vill started coming back and naturally, like anybody would, they put up a big fight about the burning down of their houses and things. Well, they came and they started, you know, grabbing to try to grab the torches away from us, and crying and yelling, you know? Trying to grab the torches. At 1st it was just pushing, just pushing them away, and then it got to be pushing a Little harder with the rifles and it progressed. It got to be where a couple people got killed. I did not see the people being killed but there were 4-5 bodies laying on the ground. and myself, I was involved in burning these vills. Now the feeling at that time was that it was just a way of relieving yourself, where you had no way of relieving yourself and with all the pressures and everything in the military and the pressures of the war itself, and being scared 24 hours a day, and not sleeping, and being bitten by mosquitoes 24 hours/day and getting cold and so on, you are so aggravated and so fed up that it was just unbelievable. Now you had to take it out, you had to take your aggravations out on something. It was a real problem. You didn't let it just sit there.

lf they had said to burn down the hooches, it would relieve what you have in yourself and you just naturally did it. We went into this vill and an old man was sitting there, he was inside and he was about 70-80, and he was dressed in white clothes. He was the only man in the vill that I saw and I went in with another guy and this other guy started tearing the things down off the wall and things and naturally the old man protested. Now this other guy pushed the old man away and shot him in the head. That was really something.

It is really hard to explain the feeling of seeing someone falling for no reason at all, just really"it is really a bad act in the sense of the word to put it in that way. He was just laying there trying to stop us and to protect his home, and he was killed worthlessly. It shocked the hell out of me, which is the least I can say as to what it actually did.

Every hooch was burned down. The people started, of course, leaving the vill with what possessions that they had.

But the feeling of the guys was that the killing was nothing. It was nothing to them. It was just like going and locking your car door. That is the feeling that they showed. They showed no emotion for it at all. It really was so inhumane.

The emotion I felt actually was unbelievable. You know, its the 1st time I had ever seen anyone killed in person. If it was with a reason, then it might have been a little different. But it wasn't. It wasn't worth anything. Whether he was seventy, or whether he was 2. It didn't seem to matter. He was still killed. I just know it was an unbelievable thing. After that there were, while the vill was burning, the Col came flying over in his chopper, flying low. I guess he spotted the smoke from an LZ that was close by and he came over and I had the radio at the time so I could hear what was going on and he asked, "Whats going on down there?" The LT said, "Everythings all right. Don't worry about it." and the Col said, "Well, are you sure everythings all right?" and the guy said, "You know what I mean. Don't worry about it." and the Col said, "Okay, take it easy." and the Col flew off. That was the last we heard about it.

Approx 4-5 people were killed in that vill plus people that were burned by white phosphorus grenades that they were throwing at the hooches, plus the beatings and so on. For actually no reason at all this happened.

Another incident that I remember was the LZ had gotten pretty much fire.

The LZ Debbie. After a rocket and mortar attack the VC tried to get up a hill and a couple of them made it in. But quite a few guys were on there and they were really messed up bad, plus there had been a few that were killed.

Well, they found about 3-4 in the morning. This happened at nite, of course. In the morning they found 3-4 dead VC that were around the perimeter and they put them in choppers and flew maybe 150-200 feet above the vill and pushed the dead bodies out on to the suspected VC vill.

It is a terrorist tactic where if you do this you give them the message, "If you mess around with us, this is what we're going to do to you." That type of thing. It is a very gross warning. You could see the people, where the chopper was pushing these bodies out onto the vill, and they came back with the chopper empty so you can imagine that they dumped them all.

A few other incidents that were major were on the interrogations where we had been chasing footprints of a VC. He went into a vill and a woman and an old man were there and there was some animals around and so on. Well, they started to interrogate her and she naturally was, the word was "no bik" which meant that she didn't want to say anything. So she kept saying "Nothing. Nothing." "No bik. No bik." So they decided that they would throw her down a well, so they did it. 2-3 guys dumped her down a well and she was screaming and hollering and an old man came out from somewhere, I don't know where. But he was screaming and yelling because they had thrown her down the well. So they threw him down too. Well, they were both down the well then.

Then along with those 2 they started throwing in, well, there was a pig that went down the well, and a couple of ducks, and a few other things. They tried to get a calf, but it wouldn't get in there. So they had this calf halfway in there, stuck in the well. It seemed funny at the time - I don't know why, but just it was an unreal realization of what was really happening there. What they felt down there. The terror in their minds. What was felt with us was absolutely myself was absolutely nothing. Later when I thought of it, it was really something else.

As I walked away, I walked around the corner, I heard an explosion and I came back and there was scattered debris and bricks from the well all over the place. So I figured that someone had thrown down the well a grenade that caused the explosion, most likely a grenade.

Some other incidents were that we were in the rice bowl, a place called the rice bowl which is a U-shaped flatlands area with mountains around it.

Well, we were on nite patrol, sleeping in the day and moving at nite. We went into a vill and interrogated a man, if you call it that. They woke him up at nite there and threw him out of bed on the floo