Vietnam - The War Crimes Files

August 20, 2006

A Tortured Past

In early 1973, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Creighton Abrams received some bad news from the service's chief of criminal investigations.

August 20, 2006

Lasting Pain, Minimal Punishment

BINH DINH PROVINCE, Vietnam — On the morning of Feb. 25, 1969, Platoon Sgt. Roy E. Bumgarner Jr. led a five-man team on a reconnaissance patrol that took them into a rolling landscape of rice fields.

August 6, 2006

Civilian Killings Went Unpunished

The men of B Company were in a dangerous state of mind. They had lost five men in a firefight the day before. The morning of Feb. 8, 1968, brought unwelcome orders to resume their sweep of the countryside, a green patchwork of rice paddies along Vietnam's central coast.

August 6, 2006

Verified Civilian Slayings

Decades-old Pentagon records show that Army criminal investigators substantiated seven massacres of Vietnamese and Cambodian civilians by U.S. soldiers — in addition to the notorious 1968 My Lai massacre.

August 20, 2006

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.

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