About this report
Deborah Nelson, who wrote these articles, is a former staff writer and Washington investigative editor for The Times. Nick Turse is a freelance journalist living in New Jersey.
This report is based in part on records of the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group, on file at the National Archives in College Park, Md. The collection includes 241 case summaries that chronicle more than 300 substantiated atrocities by U.S. forces and 500 unconfirmed allegations.
Turse came across the collection in 2002 while researching his doctoral dissertation for the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia University.
Turse and Nelson also reviewed Army inspector general records in the National Archives; FBI and Army Criminal Investigation Division records; documents shared by military veterans; and case files and related records in the Col. Henry Tufts Archive at the University of Michigan.
The reporters and Times photographer Damon Winter traveled to Vietnam in the spring to visit the sites of incidents described in Army records and to interview victims’ relatives, and Times researcher Janet Lundblad contributed to the report.
A selection of documents used in preparing this report can be found at right.
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