National Veterans Inquiry on U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam

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War Crimes: The Bitter Facts

(Mr. Dellums asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute, to revise and extend his remarks and include extraneous matter.)

Mr. Dellums.  Mr. Speaker, as the war spreads, so does the possibility and danger of additional war atrocities committed by American soldiers. ¶

Yet, the Military Establishment continues to ignore or downplay not only the factual existence of these ghastly horrors but it also refuses to question the issue of ultimate responsibility for war crimes past and present.

Today, along with 21 of my colleagues, I am reintroducing a joint resolution proposing a full-scale congressional inquiry of American war crimes and war crime responsibility. ¶

Joining with me in backing this resolution are Mr. Diggs, Mr. Rangel, Mrs. Abzug, Mr. Collins of Illinois, Mr. Roncallo, Mr. Mitchell, Mr. Rosenthal, Mr. Hawkins, Mr. Ryan, Mr. Scheuer, Mr. Edwards of California, Mr. Eckhardt, Mr. Conyers, Mr. Kastenmeier, Mr. Mikva, Mr. Seiberling, Mr. Burton, Mr. Koch, Mr. Helstoski, Mr. Dow, and Mr. Badillo. {4238c2}

Mr. Speaker, the Defense Department blatantly ignores its responsibility to deal with war crimes. Instead, the Military Establishment attempts to pin the blame on lower echelon personnel — men such as Calley, Henderson, and soon, I presume, Medina — while refusing to acknowledge that the prime responsibility lies at the highest levels of civilian and military command.

Indeed, to all intent and purpose, the Military Establishment acts as if war crimes are minute aberrations, the deranged acts of men temporarily enraged by the horrors of combat. Of course in some cases, that is true. But there have been far too many instances of premeditated atrocities for this excuse to be accepted anymore.

Mr. Speaker, the material I shall now insert into the Record is for the most part some of the most gruesome and beastly testimony that I have ever read. ¶

The transcript which follows is that of the National Veterans Inquiry on U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam held last December here in Washington. ¶

The inquiry was undertaken by the Citizens Commission of Inquiry in order that the American public and Government realize the terrible realities of war atrocities as an integral component of our illegal, insane, and immoral adventurism in Southeast Asia.

The testimony contained in the transcript is blunt. ¶

But blunt also has been the Government’s ridiculous efforts to bypass or soft-pedal the responsibility for these actions. ¶

Congress represents the people of America, and I believe the people are sick of the war, sick of the war crimes, and sick of the Military Establishment’s handling of these problems.

The transcript follows:

Transcript

Introduction

{Robert Bowie Johnson, Jr.}

Johnson.  My name is Robert Bowie Johnson, Jr. ¶

I’m a Vietnam veteran, ex-Army captain, and West Point graduate {1965}. ¶

I’m currently a veteran coordinator of the National Citizens Commission of Inquiry on U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam. ¶

On behalf of the Citizens Commission, I’d like to welcome you to the National Veterans Inquiry on U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam.

Most of you have received the schedules of when the veterans will testify. This afternoon, nine members of the Americal Division will testify. After that, Noam Chomsky will deliver a brief perspective; and after that the testimony on ground combat operations will continue until 4:30 pm.

Initially, six witnesses here will testify. They’ll be interviewed by regional coordinators. After each witness testifies, we ask that the press hold their questions to about five minutes; then after all veterans have testified we will open the floor up again for questions. Should there be any question relating to procedure or scheduling, these questions will be directed to Mr. Tod Ensign or Mr. Jeremy Rifkin, national coordinators for the Citizens Commission.

Let me introduce our first witness, Mr. Mike McCusker.

Mike McCusker

McCusker.  My name is Mike McCusker. ¶

I am an ex-Marine. I was discharged as a sergeant. I enlisted in the reserves in 1959 in July; served six years in the reserves; and then in 1965 went active duty for two years, which means I had eight years of service. While in the reserves, I was trained in Recon, {4238c3} which meant that I became a jumper, a parachutist, scuba, and all the other John Wayne varieties. ¶

In the two years that I was active I was what was called a combat correspondent for the First Marine Division in Vietnam, generally out of Chu Lai. In that position I saw damn near everything from command to the field. ¶

Perhaps an indication of that is an interview — off the cuff, which I understand you know well enough — with the commanding general of the First Marine Division at that time, and said that Vietnamese society was ignorant and superstitious, the children were raised as thieves and liars; we could do nothing with the old; the children themselves should be taken from their families and indoctrinated all their lives in government camps. ¶

A colonel, on an interview with him, said his job was to kill gooks — except I knew better what to write, and put it a different way, such as country, God, duty, and devotion, helping these people even though both of us knew it was a lie, and not worth considering as far as the military was concerned. ¶

Lifers and NCOs continually referred to Vietnamese as gooks, inferior, of no worth. ¶

As a reporter I could not write of these things, nor could I write of atrocities, nor could I write of the treatment of POW’s; I could not write of women fighting with the VC, nor of women or children taken prisoners, nor of harassment and interdiction fire, of even napalm, which was referred to as incender-gel about halfway through my tour.

My job essentially was to cover things up from the press, to be the PR, and come off with the Marine Corps looking like a shining knight on a white horse. ¶

If anything was coming up that would embarrass the Marine Corps, we were to take reporters someplace else and make sure that they didn’t know about it. ¶

The general trend was to allude in our stories to all Vietnamese as Communists, not only dehumanizing them but indicting them as something that we are programmed to fear and abhor. ¶

Every dead Vietnamese was counted as Viet Cong, because they would not be dead if they were not Viet Cong, whether they were ninety years old or six months old. ¶

The body count was any pool of blood, and I used to think that perhaps multiplied by seven. ¶

The villagers were destroyed or forcibly removed to New Life Hamlets — which is what they were called — which were nothing more than concentration camps with barbed wire and machine guns. The huts were too close, there was hardly any food — which forced beggars and whores of once-proud farmers. ¶

And perhaps that was the most degrading atrocity: the garbage cans of the different battalions and companies, they would allow one or two Vietnamese to empty these garbage cans into their buckets — which also let the Marines think, after these farmers were reduced to nothing else, that these people must be inferior if they lived out of garbage cans.

Now there are two incidents, perhaps, that are of particular value as far as atrocity is concerned. They were SOP and they’re examples of general procedure.

One happened on my mother’s birthday, October 27, 1966, northwest of the Chu Lai perimeter, at a village called Duc Pho. It was a large village complex. A sniper killed a staff sergeant, so the skipper pulled us back and then ordered nape [Napalm] on the village itself. “Just napalm the hell out of it.” When we went in later, after the fires burned down, there were many, many bodies of old women and men. But I think the worst was thirty dead children who had been laid out for us to see by the survivors, who got the hell out of there before we got in. They laid these children out for us to see in one courtyard, and from being completely — just their bodies mutilated, to some of these kids looking like they’d just been sunburned, all of them were dead, all of them were very young — boys and girls both. {4239}

Another time we destroyed two entire villages — which was a month earlier than that. One of our old men, a man who had been around for six months, got hit by a sniper. The battalion went into a frenzy and destroyed these two villages in the Pineapple Forest, which was southwest of Tam Ky about ten miles. Everything living died. It was just — it was mad, it was insane. Everything died and burned, and there was nothing left, nothing left of those two villages.

The general trend in Vietnam at that time that I was there, for the entire year, if you received incoming rounds, sniper rounds from a village, one or two or three, you called in artillery strikes on that village, you napalmed that village; whether it was artillery or air, whichever was the closest. And this was indiscriminate and this was usual.

Moderator.  Mike, in that village you last described, could you estimate the amount of civilian casualties?

McCusker.  The village — it’s really very hard to estimate the casualties. I would say anywhere from fifty to one hundred fifty. I can’t really say, because bodies even that day were burned, thrown into huts that were burning and tossed in there. So it’s very, very hard to get an estimate. ¶

Of course, the situation report on it was essentially that we engaged a very large enemy force, and I forgot how many KIAs were listed; but then again, the body count you cannot take it for worth anything.

Moderator.  Could you estimate the date of that incident, Mike?

McCusker.  Yes, that was — if I remember the correct date, it would be 7 September, 1966.

Moderator.  Perhaps it would be good to have some questions at this point if there are any from any of the members of the press.

Floor.  Was there ever any investigation of either of these incidents, 7 September or 27 October, by the 1st Marine Division or any other agency?

McCusker.  No, there was no investigation.

Floor.  Why not? Why do you think there was no investigation?

McCusker.  Essentially because I would imagine nobody thought it out of — nobody thought to question it. It was, as I said by this time SOP, and you can consider the embarrassment of insanity on coming down from it.

Floor.  Could there have been an investigation that you didn’t know about?

McCusker.  There could be a lot of things I didn’t know about. As a matter of fact, generally we were kept in ignorance. One unit didn’t know what the other unit was doing. So the average troop really had no idea exactly what was going on except in his own platoon. ¶

Now in that time when the thirty dead children were burned and napalmed, by the way, a captain came to me, because he knew I was the reporter, and he said,

And I got very angry and I said,

And he said,

Floor.  Did you write that?

McCusker.  I didn’t write anything on that story.

Floor.  Who was the officer?

McCusker.  He was a captain. I don’t — I can’t even remember his name. He was I think the battalion, perhaps the battalion S-1, if I remember correctly, but I’m not sure. ¶

Another thing too, if we did write in or stories the things that we did see, there was absolutely no chance of them getting out anyway, because every story you turned in first went to your divisional office, through a staff sergeant, through a gunnery sergeant, through a lieutenant, and then a major, and then it was sent to the Combat Information {4239c2} Bureau at 3rd Marine Amphibious Headquarters in Danang, across the river from General Walt’s headquarters. And each story which had already gone through this redlining procedure went through more lifers like gunnery sergeants, it went through a captain, for final analysis, and then up to a colonel for final analysis — before it was ever released to the press. ¶

So, no matter what you tried to do, even through your stories, there were so many checks and counterbalances that by the time your story got out, if there was anything that you had put in, it was completely devoid of it; it was just — all the life was taken out and there was nothing but a shiny little shallow story about Vietnamese love us and the Marines succeeded again and every battle was a great victory.

Floor.  Mr. McCusker, could you give us the names of the villages and the dates that this happened — pinpoint this just as close as you possibly can?

McCusker.  The two villages that were destroyed?

Floor.  Yes.

McCusker.  It was, as I said, ten miles northwest — well, about ten miles due west of Tam Ky. It was down from Hill 488 where Howard got his medal of honor, and it was in the same area where the same battalion had gotten into a fire fight the month before.

Floor.  And the dates?

McCusker.  The date, as I said, approximately, as closely as I can remember was 7 September that this happened, this incident.

Floor.  Both of these incidents?

McCusker.  The incident of the dead children was 27 October, 1966, as I said it was my mother’s birthday, which to me was an irony because it seemed like her children were dead.

Floor.  Have you reported these incidents before?

McCusker.  No, I’m afraid I never officially reported either of these two incidents.

Floor.  Why haven’t you, seeing as it happened four years ago and being—

McCusker.  Oh, I have, I have, since I’ve been out of the Marine Corps, I’ve written of these incidents, I’ve spoken of these incidents, in the Marine Corps I’ve spoken of these incidents but I never did anything official.

Floor.  What I’m driving at is why do you choose now to come here and instead of, if you feel this was an atrocity.

McCusker.  All right, I wrote the Fulbright Commission about this. I received nothing but an innocuous answer. ¶

Everytime I’ve ever written anything to the government, and I have carbons of these, you just receive an answer that says, yes, we’ll check into this, and we’ll call you later about it, and you hear nothing. ¶

I’ve done this many times, until you just throw up your hands in disgust, you know it’s just going to be swept under the floor. ¶

And I have, as I said, carbons of damn near every letter I’ve ever written, even to the prisoner of war issue — H. Ross Perrot, to which I never received an answer. ¶

Also the Saigon news correspondent who said the Army was lying — he was immediately made a chaplain’s assistant. ¶

I wrote to the Fulbright Commission which said it was going to begin to check into the management of news by the Pentagon, and military news, and I received nothing but a little answer saying, well, we don’t have enough time to really call this commission right now. It’s very interesting testimony you have, but we’ll call you later.

Floor.  Is it your impression that these incidents were the exception or were these the rule?

McCusker.  No. These were not the exception. Oh, pardon me, these are not the rule. I’m sorry, I’m getting all fuddled up — these are not exceptions; these are generally the rule. ¶

Now, what’s an atrocity? ¶

The killing down of one man running in the field? ¶

Well, {4239c3} in other testimony, wherever you naped a village, the villagers were running from it, helicopters would shoot them down. ¶

Under the general operating procedure that anybody running must be a Viet Cong or he wouldn’t run from you. It was not taken into account that he might be just scared to death and he knows what the hell you’re doing. And so they were shot down in the field as they were running through the paddies. ¶

No, these were the general rule, whether it was the shooting down of one man or whether two villages were hit.

Floor.  What battalion was this?

McCusker.  This was the First Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment, First Marine Division.

Floor.  In both these particular incidents.

McCusker.  In both these particular incidents, yes.

Floor.  Who was the commanding officer at that time?

McCusker.  I’m sorry. We’re not going to give names, it’s on file who he is.

Floor.  Well, if it’s on file, can you tell us?

McCusker.  Well—

Floor.  What’s the reasoning there?

McCusker.  Okay. The reason for not giving any particular names is once again we’re going to lay it back on individuals. And, the whole thing for this investigation is to take it away from individuals and not lay the blame back on them again and make it as if it were isolated. ¶

That this is the highest policy possible; that field grade officers were present at this time and the field grade officers yet were under orders themselves.

Floor.  You’re absolving the CO of the battalion as just doing his duty under standing orders, are you?

McCusker.  I’m absolving him as, in essence, the same way I’m absolving myself. That he was just as much a victim of the rigid structure in which he was involved, which especially his whole career was involved and so he was frozen within that position and could not do much more. ¶

And he was under orders as I was under orders. ¶

And I felt a great sense of powerlessness.

Moderator.  We’d like to move to the next witness, Mr. McCusker, unless there is a really pressing other question. We’ve got five other guys.

Daniel K. Amigone

Moderator.  Danny Amigone will be speaking to the problem, the area of mistreatment of civilians in ground combat. Dan?

Amigone.  Thank you, Chuck. Good afternoon. My name is Daniel K. Amigone. I’m from Buffalo, New York, the queen city of the Great Lakes. ¶

I enlisted in the United States Army after I received my master’s degree from Arizona State. As you know Arizona State, or Arizona, is a big, conservative hotbed of American politics, and at the time I really thought that what all we were doing in Vietnam was the right thing to do. So I enlisted in the United States Army and — for a three-year hitch by the way — and to this day I regret that. ¶

At any rate, I went through basic and AIT because I had plans of going into OCS, but just before, just before my actual departure for OCS at Fort Benning, they had a review board in my behalf and they decided I was not officer material because of various views that I had had during basic and AIT. ¶

And this I believe starts the whole process.

But anyway, after they refused my application to OCS, they sent me to Germany and I was over in Germany for three months and I volunteered for Vietnam, not like a lot of these people who have testified here before. I actually volunteered. ¶

At any rate, I went to Vietnam in March of 1968, March of 1968 I arrived at Bien Hoa and Bien Hoa just had been cleared of the Viet Cong. It was just right after Tet. I didn’t have too much in-country training because we were really badly needed, and I was assigned to Com- {4240} pany D, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry, 199th Infantry Brigade and we were called the Red Catchers. And this began my career in Vietnam, I was assigned to a infantry unit as 11 Bravo, which is an infantryman because all the training I had was during basic and AIT.

And this training I think is very important to the whole philosophy that goes into the mind of a man that goes into the front lines over in Vietnam. Basic is just, as they say, basic, you know. They teach you how to fire usually a — in my case it was an M-14. They teach you the basic fundamentals of drill, and, etc. Once you get into advanced infantry training, the process gets stepped up and the process gets more involved.

And I heard a question before about racism. Well, racism starts in AIT, Advanced Infantry Training. It’s not a rasicm designated against the Blacks and Puerto Ricans; it’s racism designed toward the Vietnamese people. On the ranges when you are firing for record score to qualify, you’re taught by your platoon sergeant and the man who is the instructor to holler kill every time you squeeze that trigger, and you’re killing a gook, as they call them. ¶

And this is really where racism goes. They’re not people anymore, they’re gooks. They’re not Vietnamese, they’re gooks. So on the bayonet range, your drill sergeant would holler, “What’s the spirit of the bayonet?” And the people would as they lunged into their targets, would say, “kill, kill, kill.” So that’s — its the spirit of killing that these infantrymen have when they go over to Vietnam. It’s really imbedded into them. ¶

And they get over to Vietnam and we practice what they have taught us.

There’s one especially — topic I want to get into, and that’s the question of McNamara’s Brigade. In 1967, because of the drainage of manpower in the United States, Secretary of, I believe, Defense McNamara needed more manpower to fill the ranks over in Vietnam, in the infantry. So what he did was: lowered the mentality, mentality standards for acceptance, accepting men into the armed forces especially the Army. What happens to these men — in particular I remember one man was in my company. He was a platoon sergeant in basic, acting platoon sergeant. I remember this one man who came up to me. He was only eighteen years old, a black boy from Newark, New Jersey, and he was married and had four kids, and he couldn’t even read the letters that his wife wrote home to him. The Army had accepted him for combat duty. The Army was going to send him to paratrooper school and eventually to Vietnam. The man asked me to read his letter to him, and I read his letter to him and I said, “Well, what are you going — are you going to write to her?” And he said, “I don’t know how to write.”

What had happened was that the Army had drafted this man, and then put him through a three-week course so that he could learn how to write his name and sign his pay voucher. And what happens? These men go through this killing process. They learn to kill and they go to Vietnam and they do kill, and they do get killed, because given the fact that their reactions are a lot slower than a man with a normal intelligence, they haven’t been told that when you hear a bullet fly you’re supposed to duct. All they’ve been told how to do is to kill. So they kill, and they get killed. ¶

And if you look at Morning Reports — Morning Reports is a document, a document that registers your KIAs which are people killed in action, or your wounded people — you will find a disproportionately high number of people were these ‘67s. I say were because the Army had gotten a little grief about this, and they changed their system from using US or RA to social security numbers. That way they could hide anybody they wanted to. {4240c2}

At any rate, these people go to Vietnam and they die. And these people, I’d like to point out, they come from the ghettos. They come from the squalid areas of this country. They come from Appalachia, they’re blacks, they’re Puerto Ricans, they’re poor whites. And I personally believe it’s a sort of genocide, a genocide in both ways, a genocide in the effect that they’re using the poor to fight the poor over in Vietnam.

So what happens when we get over there? Well, as I say I arrived in the country just after Tet, and about the first week in the country I witnessed my first atrocity. ¶

We were in the middle of a fire fight, in the middle of a fire fight, and this GI to the left of me, ahead, captured a peasant girl. And he raped her, raped her. In the middle of the fire fight, raped her and then when she tried to get away, she killed — he killed her. And it was written off as a KIA, enemy casualty killed in combat.

And one more incident I’d like to bring up. I did not actually see it, but it happened when we were out on a patrol. We had captured three enemy prisoners and because of the lateness of the evening, we decided to hold them in our camp. And we held them and the next morning all three of them were dead, and they were shot in the back. And the — one of the platoon sergeants who were on duty at the time claimed the victory for killing them in the back saying that — he said that they tried to escape but what actually came out later, that he really just killed them. He loosened their binds and just killed them. ¶

And we both times went to the CO, both times, and he said,

Moderator.  Excuse me, Dan. How did it come out that he had killed them? Did anyone see him?

Amigone.  Well, nobody really saw him kill them but he — one night he got drunk and it came out through his spirits.

Moderator.  Are there any questions to be addressed to Mr. Amigone from the press?

Floor.  You support that a disproportionate number of the poor were killed because I think you said their responses were slower. Would it be — would that be the case, or would it be the case that a disproportionate number of them are sent up to the front lines?

Amigone.  Well — a very high rate of this 1967’s that I’m talking about, that’s where they go. The Army cannot use them anywhere else. And the real sad part of it is, after they have used them for two years and if they’re still alive after their two year period, they cannot re-enlist in the army because the Army’s standards are too high for reenlistment. And yet they have fought their war for two years.

Floor.  You said that you went to your CO after each of these incidents. Did you fear any kind of harassment or reprisal for doing that, or in fact did any such harassment or reprisal happen to you?

Amigone.  Well, the first time I was like — as I said, I was brand new in the country. And he says, “Well, you’ll see this happen all the time, just brush it off.” The second time it happened late in my career and I soon after got wounded myself and was sent back.

Floor.  So you’re—

Amigone.  Nothing really happened, no.

Moderator.  Are there any more questions?

Amigone.  I’d like to add one more thing. We’ve heard about officers, and I’d like to just relate one incident. A fellow member of the 199, just back here; what happened was, I believe it was in May or April, in April of 1968 — we were operating in a very dense, a very highly vegetated area called the Pineapple. It’s outside of Saigon. ¶

And the night before, a sister company of mine went into this area and had suffered 60 per cent casualty. And it’s very heavy booby-trapped. ¶

So what happened was that our company {4240c3} was given the orders to go into it the next night. And my CO said, “No, I will not go in.” And the colonel said, “You go in or else I’ll relieve you of the command.” And my CO called back and said, “I stand relieved of my command.” And we didn’t go in that night. Well, another company went in and suffered almost 50 per cent casualties that night.

Greg Motoka

Moderator.  I’d like to introduce the next witness, Mr. Greg Motoka, from Philadelphia — correction, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Motoka.  My name is Greg Motoka. I served with the 4th Battalion, 47th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division, 4th Corps, Ben Tre Province, South Vietnam, from January 1969 to June of 1969.

The first thing that really struck my mind, the reason why I might be testifying here today; well, I was being transferred from an engineering unit to an infantry unit there in Dac Tau. The commanding general of the 9th Infantry Division made a statement to all the men who had just finished division training there at base camp at Dac Tau. And he said, quote, he stated,

And soon after I was transferred to my unit there, it was easy to understand why they had such a high body count. Ah, from the very first mission out — we had set up an ambush patrol outside of a village. Air-strikes had been called in, near, around the village, and the lieutenant’s orders were — he said, “Set up a machine gun,” an M-60 machine gun with an M-16 rifleman beside him, facing up the trail. I had my back to him, facing down the trail. ¶

The lieutenant’s orders were very specific to the machine gunner and to me to shoot anybody that comes down that trail. Anybody. He made no specifications or qualifications whether they were carrying weapons or not. ¶

Well, someone came down the trail. It was a woman carrying her child. And following our lieutenant’s orders, they were shot. And the only thing the lieutenant had to say about that was, “Let’s get out of here.” Not because he really dreaded the sight of blood, but because he figured we’d wasted enough time in ... {Ellipsis in the original} ¶

Also going on a few operations later — we had just broken camp in the morning. This was around the beginning of May. I was the point man, I might also add, for our squad. I was walking down the trail and coming through the trail where I was — there was another trail going to meet in a point, a junction there. Well, I could see on top over the grass the heads of three Vietnamese walking down, I could see from their shoulders up. And I stopped the squad and I sent back word to the lieutenant: three Vietnamese coming down the trail. ¶

The response was almost instantaneous: kill them. So, I killed them, just like that. At the time I was elated over it, you know. And I wanted to go up and check to get the rifles because I hadn’t seen any rifles, to make sure that they were carrying them and perhaps get a rifle as a souvenir. Well, when I started down the right side of the trail where they were supposedly laying, the lieutenant called me back and moved me in another direction. Also, this kept in the policy of never being allowed to see who you shot or fired at.

Our operations would begin going down the river. I might add I was a Riverine Force, what we called ourselves. We worked all the way up and down the Mekong River. Upon going down the river, we carried three boats each equipped with two fifty caliber machine guns, two grenadiers, and a rifleman supplied by Navy personnel. An area on the {4241} bank was saturated with prep fire. I mean it was so completely devastating that you could not see the shoreline any more, you couldn’t see anything but the smoke from the grenades, the bullets, the fifty caliber machine guns. ¶

I asked the reasoning behind this, and it was said, to clear away any booby traps or any land mines that might have been set. Well, this makes sense but there’s only one thing that doesn’t, because we never landed where we had set up the prep fire, which is absolutely assinine. Many times in the very close sight of villages and of towns and hamlets. ¶

This is one reason I think it’s so completely assinine to ask, “Well, why didn’t you report to your commanding officer any war crimes?” Mainly because your commanding officer is ordering you to commit the war crimes.

One other thing I might also add as far as this body count goes. ¶

Both times this woman and child were killed, five VC were reported killed. ¶

When three Vietnamese were killed, carrying no weapons, this was reported as seven Vietnamese were killed. ¶

The captain ordered — talked to all of us point men and said — he says, “Anything gets in your way in that trail, you blast it.” He says, “If you find any blood, we’ll give you credit for a body count.” ¶

And that means a Sach Cong award or perhaps a three-day in-country R and R.

One other incident that’s mentioned here that I just want to explain. When I was in the engineers, we had set up — we were building a bridge outside of a village. At the time, an ARVIN company had moved in fairly close to the village and fighting had broken out. All of our engineer company was pulled back to our perimeter except for five men who stayed there to guard the bridges that they were working on. I was one of the five men. ¶

Napalm strikes were called in very, very close to that village. Like the undergrowth was so thick, I couldn’t see any actual hamlets going up but I could see the smoke coming from very close to that village. ¶

A few minutes later a man was walking — came walking out of that village across the pontoon bridge we had made temporarily, and he proceeded to walk down the road. Our sergeant ordered him stopped, and he wanted to hold him for questioning not because — he didn’t want to give him any medical assistance because his face was badly burned. He didn’t want to give him any medical assistance, but he thought he might be a possible VC suspect. ¶

He sent me to ask my lieutenant-colonel what we should do with him, and I related the incident to the colonel, who happened by a coincidence to be there. ¶

He said, “Just get him out, just get him away from here.” I guess he thought it wasn’t important enough to help because his skin was yellow and he had slanted eyes. That’s about it.

Bob Johnson.  I might add one thing. The question was raised many times about reporting war crimes. ¶

Well, I just want to say that during four years at West Point while I was there and in my time in the Army, we were never taught, never received one meaningful hour of instruction at the elitist, the so-called cream of the crop institution not one meaningful hour of instruction on the rules of land warfare. ¶

And if we, the so-called professionals, didn’t know what war crimes were, who did? ¶

I didn’t know what war crimes were, what the rules of land warfare were, until I returned from Southeast Asia. ¶

Are there any questions of Grieg Motoka from the press, the audience?

Floor.  Did you — you were in the 9th Division, right?

Motoka.  Right.

Floor.  Did you ever see a kind of helicopter called a “gook mobile?”

Motoka.  The gook mobile?

Floor.  Yeah. {4241c2}

Motoka.  Is it a particular kind of helicopter?

Floor.  It was the commanding general’s helicopter at Uhl’s — but I don’t know if it was there during his tenure.

Motoka.  No, not offhand. I really couldn’t say. I don’t remember it.

Floor.  Were you there during Uhl’s — during General Uhl’s command?

Motoka.  I really don’t know his name. I never paid attention to any of the generals’ names or anything. I was there from January of 1969 to June of 1969.

Floor.  You didn’t know the name of your division commander?

Motoka.  No. I didn’t know the name of the division commander — at the time I probably did, but it’s been so long that I forgot it.

Floor.  Can I ask you to explain again — I know that you just amplified one of the questions but you said it’s assinine to consider reporting to your CO for war crimes because it is your CO who is ordering you to do the war crimes?

Motoka.  Exactly.

Floor.  Well, you see there is a chain of command in the military whereas you are to report anything up the chain of command. If you see anything — well, not even necessarily war crimes, but in this case it would be war crimes — you would report it up to your next highest echelons, level. All right. The highest echelon there in the immediate vicinity was the CO, and he was the one who ordered me there at the time to shoot the Vietnamese. So if he’s the one telling me, what’s the sense of reporting to him?

Moderator.  Well, when all Vietnamese in Vietnam generally are treated with disgust, it’s very hard to understand that you’re involved in a war crime. Most of the GIs feel — well, they’re the enemy. They’re in a free-fire zone, they support the VC maybe, so they’re the enemy. You don’t think in terms of it being a free fire zone. Orders don’t come down and say: go out and murder prisoners. They say, as has been said here, get me a bigger body count. And it’s understood what’s to be done. The search and destroy policy teaches GIs not to value human life and property. It doesn’t teach them in their minds to go commit a war crime. But what we’re saying — what I say is that atrocities in Vietnam, the torture of prisoners and so on, is a logical consequence of our inhuman policy in Vietnam. ¶

Any other questions from the press or members of the audience?

Floor.  In your unit did you ever hear the terms: pacification, civic action, winning hearts and minds?

Motoka.  Sure. There was a pacification process. I forget — Chieu Hoi, the Chieu Hoi program, yes. This was very interesting. As a matter of fact, because members in Chieu Hoi, the so-called VC who gave themselves up, were supposed to be given outstanding treatment and put in secure, what they call secure areas. ¶

I happened to visit by chance a secure area one time. I passed by. It was nothing but a concentration camp with a barbed wire, machine guns pointed out, eventually in. But this is what they mean by “pacification process” in the delta. It was the big Chieu Hoi program: turn yourselves in and we’ll put you in this pacified area, which is nothing more than a prison. ¶

That’s their extent of pacification.

Moderator.  Another very common euphemism, used at the highest levels, for the destruction of Vietnam, is a program called Nation Building. It’s called Nation Building. I was briefed on it and participated in it in Vietnam. And of course it’s not nation building at all, it’s nation destroying.

Floor.  Can I carry that question just one step further?

Motoka.  All right.

Floor.  Your unit, or other units, did they attempt to practice civic action aside from {4241c3} telling of a body count? What — the other side of the coin.

Motoka.  We had one thing where we would go — the only civic action that we had was checking ID cards. As far as going out to give medical help or medical support to wounded or injured, there was none. ¶

On one instance I know — we had to go through it many times, we went to small villages to check for ID cards. ¶

Upon — a few incidents I know, the people didn’t have an ID card. ¶

They were dragged forcibly from their hamlet while their wife and children would beg and plead and cry on their hands and knees to let them go, but you are — the atmosphere is so entirely oppressive to everybody that its — you’re so numb that you just don’t care. But they’re down on their knees pleading with you, and that’s the extent of the pacification.

Moderator.  Okay. Thank you very much, Greg.

Kenneth Barton Osborn

Moderator.  Gentlemen, our next witness will be Kenneth Barton Osborn, from Washington, D.C.

Osborn.  Mike, here, just provided me with my own documentation, which I’d provided him with earlier. My name is Kenneth Barton Osborn. I live here in Washington and I’m a student here at American University, in the International Service Division. This is my DD 214, which proves that I was honorably discharged this past, let’s see, October of 1969. I entered the Army — can you all hear me — I entered the Army in 1966 and was released from active duty in October of 1969, and this is the form that proves that.

I was in Vietnam from September of 1967 until December of 1968. My MOS in the Army was 97C40, which simply is described as an area intelligence specialist. I was trained at Fort Holabird from April of 1967 until right before leaving for Vietnam in September of 1967.

My job in the Army is described overtly — unclassifiedly — as that of an area intelligence specialist; that is, I’m supposedly familiar with the geographical area, culture in that area — and work to provide cross-cultural empathy facility for the Army, that is, so they can understand the culture into which they go on any operational basis. ¶

In fact, when we started the program at Fort Holabird — we were there a couple of days for general orientation and when the class was organized, sat down and in walked a colonel who was a military intelligence — a full colonel in the Army — who gave us what they call the scare lecture. ¶

He described to us that what we were going to be trained for was not, in fact, just area specialty, but the function of what they call a case officer, or an agent handler. ¶

This is the job of spotting, analyzing, recruiting, training and running and terminating agents, who in fact are broken down as principal agents who run nets and sub-agents who are in fact the people in the field who are gathering information. ¶

There are two basic functions in military intelligence: that of the counter-intelligence agent, who supposedly does just that — counter the enemy’s intelligence — and the classified function, which is denied by our government, of the overt, active, aggressive collection of intelligence. ¶

It was my job to perform that classified function.

Of course, the starting point with the orientation at Holabird was that, all this that we were going to be trained to do was against the Geneva Accords, and if we had moral compunctions about it, we could opt out of the program if we wanted to. ¶

If we had none, you just go ahead and play along with the program — be trained this way, and then they would return to us as a result the privilege of autonomy from the military. ¶

That is, at one point in our training we would be released from uniform, from mili- {4242} tary structure, we would be subservient to only a few people. ¶

In other words, we would be more or less free agents.

This did happen when I got to Vietnam. I worked in the Danang area — that’s the I Corps area — and ran agent nets there. I won’t go into an awful lot of detail that’s unnecessary; it’s sufficient to say that I organized nets in the I Corps area and provided lead information to — I was with the 525th military intelligence group, with their 1st Battalion in the I Corps area. Traveled there under the cover of a GS-7 and later a GS-9 as I promoted myself during the year.

I lived under a cover name which is not my own name — which is not necessary to go into, I guess, and lived there in a house in Danang City and served using organizations being the 1st Marine Division, the 3rd Marine Division, the 3rd Marine Amphibious Force, Army units such as the Americal Division down in Lower I Corps, the 7th Armored Cavalry, which was in An Kay, and later came up to Danang. ¶

When I first got there, there was no liaison with the using units, and I had to establish that and also start from the beginning and establish nets and so forth. It took me a couple of months to get into business, and also to sell my services to the American military, who were reticent to use “foreign nationals,” that is, indigenous Vietnamese personnel, for information. ¶

When I proved on a retrospective plausibility basis, that is, look what I report and see what happens and if you believe it then accept my reports — when I sold them this information that way and they believed it, we were in business and I served in the 1st Marine Division, and the 3rd, and the 3rd Marine Amphibious Force primarily, because at that time the majority of the operations in the area were Marine operations. ¶

My liaison was with the G-2 officers of those organizations, and with subordinate S-2 officers in regimental headquarters subservient to those divisions in the area. ¶

So that was my function in Vietnam. I was there, in that function, for 16 months.

During that time, I worked with interrogations and I worked with the using units in their field operation at different times mostly to get a reading on what kind of information they needed — I needed requirements. I needed to know what to collect. I needed to know what to levy on my agents and as a result, since I couldn’t get any specifics, other than things from the Pentagon like “Beware of troop movements around the western Chechoslovakian border,” and so forth — couldn’t be more specific than that, and we were in Southeast Asia, I had to go out and get my own requirements from the using units so that I could travel to the field with the Marine counter-intelligence investigating team. ¶

During that time, I saw several incidents which I want to relate to you here.

There was a counter-intelligence team, an interrogation team, there on the compound of the 3rd Marine Amphibious Force, which is adjacent to the Danang air base in their G-2 shop, they have an investigation — they had at that time — I think it was 1967 or 1968 — they had an intelligence team in there which were made exclusively of American Marines. ¶

There were no Vietnamese there. These Marines were trained and spoke Vietnamese. They were interrogators. ¶

In the course of collecting intelligence information, I would come up with what Ed Murphy referred to as VC infrastructure detail, personalities, descriptions of people working in the local committees in the villages which were VC organizations. ¶

When I got this information — at first there was no function, that is, no use for it, because there was no program that could effectively deal with eliminating VC infrastructure on a combat-unit basis. ¶

I later got into the Phoenix program on — as a result of searching around for a unit that could use this information. ¶

At the time, early in the game, I used to give {4242c2} the information to the 3rd Marine Amphibious Force interrogating teams and they would pick up personally. ¶

There was a lieutenant, first lieutenant Marine, who was later promoted to captain during his tour there that I knew him, who would go out to the village with other Marines, Marine EM — enlisted men — and scarf up these people who were described in my reports and bring them in for interrogation. ¶

They had two hootches right there on that 3rd Marine Amphibious Force compound, which were devoted to interrogation and they used the following modus operandi: ¶

At one point, I had described a certain individual of a local village — suburban village of Danang. They went out and scarfed her up and brought her in and simply put her in one of the wire mesh cages that were inside this hootch, which was divided into four cages. She was in one of them, and they simply put her in there. There were no facilities other than a wooden bench — regular, like a picnic bench, which stood on, like, a sawhorse — on which she could sit, sleep, do whatever she wanted to. There were no toilet facilities. There was no food and there was no water. ¶

And the idea was that she should stay there until she talked. When they had weakened her, I was on the compound one day and the — a lieutenant said to me, I want to show you what we’re doing with so-and-so whom you — who we got from your report there. Come on over next door and I’ll show you the process and when we went over — and they had set this hootch up within the week. ¶

And they were quite proud of the fact that they were just leaving the people there to starve. I said, well, we’ll just leave her there until she talks. They did leave her there for about ten days until, finally, she was so weak that she couldn’t respond to anything, and at that point, they just sent her back to her village and called it a loss — got no information from her.

At another point, I had identified one of the members of the village committees for VC logistical supply, as I remember. In any case, he was picked up and brought in as what was described earlier as a detainee, not a POW, but a detainee. ¶

The fellow was put in the same hootch with the four cages, in another cage, and he was forced to lay on the floor with his hands tied behind his back and they would insert a bamboo peg — a wooden peg, I’m not sure if it was bamboo — a wooden peg, a dowel with a sharpened end, into the semicircular canal of the ear, which would be forced into the head little by little as he was interrogated. And eventually, did enter the brain and killed the subject, the detainee. ¶

They never got any viable information out of him — they called that a loss but in any case that was one thing that was a standard operating procedure. ¶

And I asked the lieutenant, I said, how often do you do this kind of thing? He said, whenever we can’t get information by easier methods. ¶

These methods being, I won’t re-describe the ringing up of the telephone sort of thing to the women’s breast nipples and the men’s genitals. ¶

When these things failed, then they went further into — the, I think, worst of the torture methods that I saw was the one of the inserting the dowel into the ear.

With that same unit, the 3rd Marine Division, I went along twice when they would go up in helicopters which belonged to the Marine Division and take two detainees along. ¶

They used one as a scare mechanism for the other. If they wanted to interrogate detainee A, they would take someone along who was either in bad health or whom they had already written off as a loss — take both these Vietnamese along in the helicopter and they would say, they would start investigating Detainee B, the one they had no interest in, and they wouldn’t get any information out of him and so they would threaten to throw him out of the helicopter. {4242c3}

All the time, of course, the detainee they wanted information from was watching. And they would threaten and threaten and, finally, they would throw him out of the helicopter. ¶

I was there when this happened twice and it was very effective, because, of course, at the time the step one was to throw the person out of the helicopter and step two was to say, “You’re next.” ¶

And that quite often broke them down, demoralized them, and at that point they would give whatever information. Sometimes the information was accurate; sometimes this was considered an ineffective method of investigation. Sometimes the Vietnamese, when threatened with things like the dowel treatment or the telephone treatment or in one case, the helicopter incident, would start babbling anything at all — would say whatever you, he felt, wanted to hear, and this, again was ineffective. ¶

But that was the modus operandi used, and those were the incidents that I actually was involved in.

Floor.  Excuse me — you did actually see these two people thrown out of the helicopters?

Osborn.  Yes sir, on two different occasions, yes sir.

Floor.  Could you tell me when and—

Osborn.  Yes sir, that was—

Floor.  Be as specific as you can?

Osborn.  Yes sir, I will. That was in the month of April, 1968, and it was northwest of Danang, perhaps fifteen miles just beyond the suburban villages there. The base of operations was the 3rd Marine Amphibious Force compound adjacent to the Danang air base in I Corps, and they would go from there up in a helicopter and go through this procedure and come back down again with what was considered a successful interrogation.

Floor.  You went up there for that specific purpose?

Osborn.  That’s right.

Floor.  Now, what was, what procedure did you follow, how did you do it?

Osborn.  Simply go out to — from the Marine Wing, they called it, there, there were on the compound that were the interrogation headquarters, go out to the helicopter there in a jeep, take these people with us. They weren’t badly restrained, they had their hands tied behind their backs. They walked, they were pushed and so forth onto the helicopter, and when they got up they would simply start on the subject that they didn’t want to interrogate, to scare the one that they did want to interrogate, and they’d terminate — they would throw the second subject out to scare the first one into whatever they either wanted to hear or whatever was appropriate.

Floor.  Who did the throwing?

Osborn.  The throwing was done by Marine enlisted men.

Floor.  On whose orders?

Osborn.  On the lieutenant’s orders.

Floor.  Where were you when it happened?

Osborn.  I was there in the helicopter on one of the side seats observing—

Floor.  How far would you be from the door?

Osborn.  Five feet.

Floor.  What would you say? Did you ever make an attempt to stop it or—

Osborn.  No, I did not. I was there to observe.

Moderator.  Mr. Osborn has some additional testimony, sir. Could we — unless you have any objections — could we get that out before we have any additional questions.

Osborn.  What else do you want to know?

Moderator.  Bart, you said that you worked closely with the CIA in the Phoenix program; how closely did you work with the CIA, and what did the Phoenix program mean to you?

Osborn.  As I had mentioned briefly earlier, sometimes the using combat units in the I Corps area, which is the area I basically {4243} served because that’s where the nets were gathering information, had no use for potentially valuable information, accurate information and timely, that we would gather just in the course of getting reports in from the field, from the Vietnamese agents. ¶

I was frustrated to let a lot of the information on a timely basis go down the drain. If I would have a VC who was the head of a committee or a fairly high-placed individual in the VC infrastructure and I found out where he was, where he would be, how he could be picked up and so forth, and I’d take this to the Marine Division and they’d say that’s nice, but we really don’t have the facilities to use it. ¶

I lived in Danang and I happened to run into a fellow in the club where I — the Stone Elephants, the Navy officers’ club — ate there, and I ran into a fellow who ran the I Corps area for CIA operations and I talked to him and found out through him that they had a program that could receive that kind of information.

On a discreet basis, I called him aside after dinner one night and asked him if he knew where I could disseminate this information on an effective basis. He put me in contact with an Army major who was at a house there rented by the CIA in Danang, and I established the liaison necessary in order to disseminate whatever VCI information I got with my reports, and did that for, I guess, for the last eight months or so that I was in Vietnam.

Moderator.  Does the term exterminate, to terminate with extreme prejudice — are you familiar with that term?

Osborn.  There are two ways — yes — there are two ways to terminate an agent. When you are through with the agent, that is, when he serves no more function to you, you can do one of two things. ¶

You can terminate him by paying him an amount of money, thanking him for his service, swearing him to secrecy, and simply letting him go — that’s without prejudice. ¶

There is termination with prejudice where the agent constitutes a threat either to your operations, to you personally as a case officer, to whatever has determined the threat, and you terminate him with prejudice by either killing the individual or perhaps relocating him in the— ¶

I remember one incident of an agent up in Phuo By who was relocated as a prisoner of war into a Chieu Hoy camp and reoriented— ¶

I’m not really familiar with the details of that, but the main idea was to, of course, neutralize the individual. ¶

I got orders a couple of times to terminate agents with prejudice because of things they had done which were considered illegal or in bad taste or threatening — bad security — while I was there.

Floor.  Did you follow those orders out, sir?

Osborn.  I had an agent, for instance, in Danang who was an effective principal agent — ran a net in the I Corps area around Danang. And who had worked — had told me when I hired him that he had never worked for American intelligence before. That was a starting point when I hired him. He spoke English so we communicated well — he was fluent in French and English, and he told me, no, he had never worked for the American intelligence community before. ¶

It turned out, though, that while he had been working for us for some time, in March of 1968, a list came out from the CIA, from CSD, they’re in Danang. And it was called the catalog of undesirable personalities, and we called that a blacklist. People who had done no-nos and were to be left untouched by the American military intelligence community. ¶

His name was on that list and I was shocked to find that out. ¶

I went — I went to a captain, an Army military intelligence captain, and I asked him what he thought I ought to do in that method of termination. He said, well, you do whatever you want to do, he’s your {4243c2} man, and generally that was the case, that the case officers were able to use their own discretion. ¶

But he said, “I want the man dead,” and so I said, “All right.” ¶

And I went out and he was a resident of Danang, had a family, a wife who also spoke English and a fine woman, also two children, two or three children. And so this would be eliminating the father of two children, obviously, and for no real reason, because what he had done was to have worked previously for the CIA as an interpreter and they didn’t like his interpreting because he had been feeding information to agents on the side in order to corroborate their information and get them better pay. He’d sit down with two agents and say, what do you have and what do you have, and he’d cross the information. ¶

They found this out and they fired him, on the blacklist as a result. ¶

He was an active agent with me, he was blacklisted, so he had to go. ¶

I took him aside; at the time he had quite a number of pieces of equipment. He had a Yamaha motorcycle that I had lent him for running around, he had a two-way radio, a little Motorola set that we communicated with on an emergency basis, he had a number of things and he owed me a lot of piastres which he’s drawn on his salary — which I had done in order to get a handle on him, in order to make him work effectively. ¶

And so he was strung out, and he was obligated in this way, and I sat him down and said I need these things back — it was a period of about ten days. ¶

And when I had gotten all these things back, which, of course, were compromising logistics, I then told him what I had been told to do and told him that if he did not disappear from the city, with his family or without his family but in any case disappear for at least three months, I would have to come back and kill him. ¶

That was a hollow threat but it worked. And he left and whether it was followed up or not, I don’t know, but that’s an example of going beyond what the orders were in neutralizing agents.

Floor.  What about the other orders?

Osborn.  I had an agent in Phu Bai, which was the 3rd Marine Division base, and he had been involved in some black market activities, and that came up in the course of an interview one time that I had with him one time. ¶

And I reported it to — in a report which was standard after every interrogation, after every what they call personal meeting with your agent. ¶

Because he would be compromised by having his finger in the black market, and was not working exclusively for me or for the American intelligence community, he was considered a threat. ¶

I was told to terminate him. ¶

I went up to Phu Bai and I brought him down to Danang to live with some relatives, and that’s what happened.

Moderator.  Are you familiar, Bart, with any incident where a person was actually terminated, liquidated, with extreme prejudice?

Osborn.  Yes, I’m afraid I had at one point in my employ a woman who was Chinese and who lived in Vietnam. She was a Chinese Vietnamese citizen. She was educated to the point where she spoke several languages, she spoke fluent English. And I used her as an interpreter and also as a guide to the culture that I was working in because as a Westerner, there were a lot of things there that I couldn’t have been sensitive to. She was my guide in that respect. ¶

She also was my direct contact with agents, that is, I had people I didn’t want to meet because I didn’t want them to know me because in case they got compromised, they couldn’t compromise me. ¶

So she was my go-between. She acted as an interpreter, guide, and support agent, that is, a courier. ¶

And at one point she had been — because we were short of people who were that well trained in Vietnamese, she was cross-exposed to operations. She was into a lot of my operations. {4243c3} ¶

She worked with — and incidentally, I ran only unilateral operations, American operations only, not in cooperation with the Vietnamese, which is against the Geneva Convention.

And so this was a sensitive area. ¶

When it was determined by a military intelligence captain that she was too cross-exposed, he reported that to Saigon and he got the reading back that she ought to be terminated from the scene. She ought to be let go. It was not determined — it wasn’t said whether she ought to be terminated with prejudice or not. ¶

He took it upon himself to terminate her by murdering her. ¶

He murdered her with a .45 in a street in Danang, shot her in the neck and let her lay in the street there. ¶

It was said that there were Viet Cong agents, or terrorists, or sappers, or something in the area who shot her, and it was plausible because we knew that she was heavily involved in intelligence and would have been targeted by the unfriendlies — that’s the Viet Cong.

Moderator.  I have one further question before I turn this over to the press. Bart, since your return to the United States have you ever worked, have you ever been in contact with the CIA since that time?

Osborn.  Yes I have, Mike. I had been pretty deeply involved in a number of operations in Vietnam, as I said, and as a result when you recruit agents you usually do it by recruiting their loyalty to you, and then get them to relate to the mission. ¶

When I left Vietnam I turned over my operation to my successor, but because a number of these things were CIA-supported, like the Phoenix program, VCI operations, and so forth, I was recontacted when I got back to the states, back a couple of months. ¶

They recontacted me and asked if I would serve on an advisory basis, and I did for a while. I don’t think that that’s all that relevant to this whole thing, but it is true that these things continue. ¶

I terminated that whole thing this June, and I have no association with the CIA any more.

Moderator.  Gentlemen, any questions, please.

Floor.  When you were recruiting these agents, you were working for the CIA?

Osborn.  Yes sir, these were military intelligence modus operandi — you know, method of operation — nets. They were serving military combat units for combat intelligence and the Phoenix program for VC infrastructure, and they were laterally disseminated on a discretionary basis. ¶

If I had only combat information I’d only send it to combat units. If I had only VCI I’d send it only to the Phoenix program, the Phoenix coordinator there in Danang.

Floor.  Mr. Osborn, in that first incident you mentioned, about the termination, you said that was a hollow threat. Why did you say that?

Osborn.  Because at the time that I said that, I didn’t have any intention of killing him, but just of exercising a second threat if the first one didn’t work. I may have killed him eventually if he became a viable threat. That is, he may have gotten bitter and compromised a number of things I was involved in and as a result have threatened my life. I may have. But I didn’t. But as I say, at the time that was a hollow threat because I didn’t intend to kill him, when I told him I did.

Floor.  You would have killed him if necessary?

Osborn.  Yes I would have.

Floor.  Why are you spilling all the beans now? Because we haven’t won the war?

Osborn.  No, ma’am, it’s not.

Floor.  Well, will you tell us why?

Osborn.  Yes. I feel as if this standard operating procedure, which is authorized by the American military community, and by the CIA, is against the American value system. ¶

I don’t feel that I can come back with a clear conscience from Vietnam and con- {4244} sider myself a good Christian, or I don’t feel I can have a clear conscience, knowing that my government is working despicable methods of operation in other parts of the world, and denying it; working against the Geneva Conference and blaming other nations for doing the same; taking action against foreign interests which are doing the same thing that we’re doing, it’s just that we classify it as they do — we catch them, they catch us, and it constitutes one heck of a hypocrisy. ¶

The reason I’ve said these things today is simply to document or add evidence to the fact that we are doing these things, and my suggestions would be that we don’t have to. ¶

We should not criticize others for doing the same things that we’re doing, or we ought to cut it out. One of the two. ¶

I simply want to add to what the others have said, and that’s why I’m here today.

Floor.  Do you consider yourself a war criminal, under Nuremberg?

Osborn.  Yes, for some of the things that I did in Vietnam I feel that they definitely were criminal.

Floor.  Mr. Noetzel, did you ever terminate an agent yourself?

Osborn.  Mr. Noetzel?

Floor.  No, I’m sorry.

Osborn.  Mr. Osborn. I beg your pardon?

Floor.  Did you ever terminate an agent by death yourself? Did you ever kill an agent?

Osborn.  No, I didn’t. I never killed an agent.

Floor.  In that first case, the case of the agent with the Yamaha. Is it possible that when he was working for the CIA he was not aware of that?

Osborn.  No, it is not possible that he was not aware that he was working for the American military intelligence community, and that was my question to him that he had denied. So in essence he had lied to me. And the interest in lying was simply this: the American intelligence community was hiring him, and they were the only force hiring him in the area, and if he wanted a job — and he was qualified because of his multi-language capability — he had to get on with somebody. And he had been fired by the CIA, and as a matter of fact he had not re-approached us, we had approached him.

Floor.  With the Chinese agent who was killed, did you have any advance news that he was going to be killed?

Osborn.  No, I had not advance news.

Floor.  In that case, what was your reaction, if you felt it was unnecessary? Did you protest?

Osborn.  Yes, I protested to the fellow who had murdered her and asked him why, and he simply explained that she was too cross-exposed and was too involved in operations. And I didn’t feel that since she had been asked to help us, and had never done anything actively or passively that was against our interest, but had only followed through and had gotten involved in as many operations as we had asked her to get involved in, then to determine her fair bait for murder seemed wrong.

Floor.  Sir, did you ever kill anyone other than an agent?

Osborn.  In Vietnam?

Floor.  In Vietnam.

Osborn.  Not that I can tell you about. In fact, during the fifteen months that I was in Vietnam I was responsible for deaths, yes.

Floor.  In what respect?

Osborn.  Several respects. One of our functions in supplying combat information to the 1st Marine Division, especially their G-2 office, was to get targeting areas for B-52 strikes, and we would follow these up to see how effective we had been. ¶

For instance if we had gotten an NVA unit reported in an area, and they would come in with the B-52s and they would target them as they came in and they would plough an area — that is, they’d drop bombs and plough an {4244c2} area there — and we’d follow up occasionally, and I’d find that we had killed civilians in the process. ¶

And whether or not they were Viet Cong agents or not I don’t know. There were civilians dead as a result who were not, in fact, part of the NVA units that were targeted.

Floor.  Did you ever kill any civilians or POWs yourself?

Osborn.  Not myself, no.

Floor.  Did you ever make any attempts to tell anybody, any government authorities, about these things?

Osborn.  In other words, bring charges or make an official complaint? No, never did.

Floor.  Will you tell us why?

Osborn.  Yes. Because it was so much the SOP, and my entire peer group had been doing the same thing, and to bring this up as a subject was old news. ¶

And as a matter of fact the people to whom I talked privately, private citizens, when I came back to the United States, doubted this — frankly didn’t believe me, or if they believed me generally, and knew that I was not known to be a liar, knew that I wouldn’t have any reason to lie about this, thought it was sad that I had been exposed to a war, but that’s war.

Floor.  Have you ever told this in public before?

Floor.  What about your peer group, what is their attitude about these cages, and throwing people out of helicopters and that sort of thing, as you say.

Osborn.  They vary. They do vary in their attitudes. I know people who are conscience-stricken about the methods of operations that we described, I know other people who just looked on it as a dirty necessity, of being in Vietnam for a year. And you get your year over and you go home and forget about it. There were all levels of conscience about it. Generally, though, it was an accepted thing.

Floor.  Tell us what your rank was.

Osborn.  Yes sir, I was in Vietnam, when I first got there, a Pfc, an E-3 in the Army, and when I left Fort Holabird an E-3. It was a long time before I was promoted to an E-4. I was an E-4 when I left Vietnam, and was promoted to E-5 by administrative process just before I left the Army.

Floor.  Did you ever get extra pay? Did you have a living allowance, or that sort of thing?

Osborn.  Yes. We had allowance for separate rations, because we had to eat, we had to live in the status and keep up — GS-9s make a good bit of money in Vietnam. They have a 25 per cent pay increment and so forth. On Pfc salary I couldn’t necessarily do that, and so there were separate rations, separate living allowance, and then a lot of our expenses were paid through a separate intelligence fund, so we didn’t have to put it out of our own pockets.

Floor.  Would you explain what you understand to be your violations of the Geneva Accords?

Osborn.  Yes. Primarily it was this. ¶

I mentioned the scare lecture that we had at Holabird, and it mentioned that we would be working in an area, that is, agent operations, that is plausibly denied by the American government. If we didn’t want to associate with it that was up to us, but we had to make that value judgment and do it voluntarily. ¶

In fact, out of a class of thirty-seven people only one opted out, and we were told that it would not be a mark against us if we decided not to continue with this at that point, but that we would have the rest of the day to think about it, and we were let go that day from class. And the next day we came back and a fellow had opted out, and the rest stayed because about half the class knew that that was the case, that area intelligence specialists were in fact agent handlers, and the others, who were surprised, accepted it. {4244c3}

Floor.  Sir, what were the violations, though?

Osborn.  Oh, all right. Yes. ¶

And we were told, we were told at the time that our function would be to run illegal operations, that is, active collection of intelligence by utilization of spies, nets, agent nets — and this was illegal. It alludes to the thing about if you are caught or compromised, we’ll deny the whole thing. And that’s basically why we lived in cover status in Vietnam. ¶

Because if John Smith, and that’s a fictional name, was caught doing so and so, he would be pulled back to Saigon and perhaps sent out of country, perhaps changed back to uniform, and he would simply evaporate — and so if charges were officially ever brought against the government that said, “We know of a John Smith in the I Corps area, who was in fact recruiting agents,” they’d say, well, you document that, and that’s fine. ¶

That was plausible denial, and it worked very effectively. This was illegality number one. ¶

Another example of what we were doing illegally, I mentioned before, we were running unilateral operations only. Just unilateral. They were an American effort, no cooperation whatsoever with the Vietnamese, based on the assumption that whatever the Vietnamese did was compromising because they might be infiltrated by the Viet Cong. ¶

In any case, it is, in fact, it is in conflict with our agreement with the government of South Vietnam to have exclusively unilateral collection of intelligence operations, which is what we had.

Floor.  Sir, do you feel in any personal danger as a result of your appearance here today?

Osborn.  I don’t feel as if, if somebody came out and reported to the press involvement with classified operations which are still classified, to which I have agreed not to speak, and I have signed agreements with the Department of Defense saying that I would not go into specific detail, which I, in fact, have not named names today — this is not a crucifying session of any kind — I have agreed not to go into this in detail. ¶

It was implicit in my agreement with the Department of Defense, that if anyone asked me what I did in Vietnam, I was an area intelligence specialist; “What was that?” Well, you were kind of familiar with the area and you studied geography and knew map reading and things, but I don’t know map reading and things very well, so that was not very plausible. ¶

And so I don’t think that this would do me any good, if I went to apply for top-secret clearance, like I had before, I probably wouldn’t make out too well, but what I plan to do is go into private industry on the basis of my education when I complete it, and so forth. ¶

And I hope to be able to stand on my own two feet — not a precarious process like investigation. ¶

Is the “pinko” questionable? ¶

I feel as though the classification system is closed to me as a result of today, and whatever else I get into.

Floor.  You say you are at George Washington?

Osborn.  I’m at American.

Floor.  And what is your major?

Osborn.  My major is languages and linguistics. I’m in a Masters degree for International Services program, in the school there, and I’m Western Europe oriented — German and so forth.

Floor.  What was your analysis of the Green Beret case in 1969, in Nha Trang? The way in which the Administration and the Department of the Army handled that?

Osborn.  I mentioned plausible denial to you before. And I think that if you were familiar with the method of operation that went on, and it was a part of your life, you lived with it — and if that were your goal, your mission, your assignment, and so forth, if you heard of having a double agent through the 5th Special Forces, who was to {4245} be terminated, and it flapped, that is, it became known, and it was necessary for our government to deny it, to see them deny it, and go through the legal process to divert attention from it or whatever they were trying to do, was not surprising at all. ¶

That’s the way I saw it.

Floor.  Sir, you say you saw Marines push Vietnamese out of helicopters. Could you tell me what the reaction of the Marines aboard the helicopters was when this occurred? Was there any reaction, or this sort of thing, and what was the reaction of the victims?

Osborn.  The victims fell.

Floor.  Before.

Osborn.  Before they left the helicopter? That’s two questions, sir.

Floor.  I’d like to know a little about what was going on in the helicopter.

Osborn.  Right. We’d go up, and the interrogation team chief — the lieutenant — and one, two, three EM, I’m not — there were two or three EM, I guess. And they would have these people with them, and they would have their hands tied behind their back, and they would load them on the helicopters, and the helicopter would take off and the— ¶

The Marines, you have to understand that wherever they were in a function like interrogation, any support function at all, they considered it less dangerous than a combat mission. ¶

They would go out in the boonies and kill via their M-16 rifles. And so I didn’t ever see any moral compunctions about that being done; as a matter of fact when they were told to go ahead and push the fellow they would go ahead and push him. ¶

And on both occasions that happened.

Moderator.  I’m sorry to interrupt this right now. We’re already five minutes over the time of this session, and we have two more witnesses. Mr. Osborn will be available for additional interviews, he’ll be here during the day, so I’d like to move on right now.

Norm Kiger

Moderator.  The next witness is Mr. Norm Kiger.

Kiger.  My name is Norman Kiger, age twenty-two. I’m from Mount Rainier, Maryland. ¶

I served in Vietnam from December of 1968 until August of 1969, during which time I was with the communications company, 7th Communications Battalion, 1st Marine Division.

At one point in my tour in Vietnam I was attached to the 1st Tank Battalion on an observation post called Observation Post Bear, which was near the village of Tuy Lon, which is approximately ten miles southwest of Danang. ¶

On this observation post, the commander there was a staff sergeant. It was a daily occurrence for him while I was there, it was either daily or every other day; it was several times a week he would test fire claymore mines into the village, which was at the bottom of the hill. The village was approximately 75 to 100 meters away and the range of a claymore is approximately 200 meters. ¶

From on top of the hill we could hear the pellets from the claymore hitting the hootches, we could hear dogs barking, chickens running around, children screaming, that sort of thing. ¶

I was never able to see exactly what the results of these firings were, but it was not done as any kind of a tactical move. It was done strictly for fun. The staff sergeant always voiced his hatred for gooks, as he called them.

On one particular night in, I believe it was the month of February, of 1969, I was asleep. I was not on watch, but there was a man who was on watch in my bunker, or was supposed to be. Apparently he was somewhere else, goofing off, during which time a volley of rockets were fired from nearby, out in front of his position, the position of my bunker. The rockets were fired at Danang airstrip. No one saw — actually saw them fired, you could only hear them. No one saw where {4245c2} they came from, or who fired them. ¶

We all ran up to have a look in the direction where they’d been fired from and out in the graveyard near the bunker — maybe 100 meters — there were three people. I have no idea whether they were Vietnamese. They could have even been Americans. You could not tell whether they carried any type of hand weapons but they definitely had no rocket launcher of any type.

This was not a free fire zone, but the staff sergeant in command told the other man on my bunker to open fire on these men with a 50-caliber machinegun, which he did. And killed all three of them. We never did go out to see who they were; we never really did find out who they were, although the next morning, at the village, there was some sort of celebration. I don’t know what a Vietnamese funeral service is like, but that’s what I assumed it to be.

Also it was a dally occurrence at approximately sunset, when the Vietnamese were bringing their livestock in from the fields — they would herd them from the fields into the village. As they were doing so, many of them had to pass by our position. And at this time the staff sergeant and some of the others on the hill would harass the civilians by firing the 50-caliber machineguns directly behind them as they walked, trying to scare them. And they were successful.

Moderator.  Okay. Are there any questions from the press? Anything else you’d like to add?

Kiger.  In the end of February, 1969, the Tet offensive was just beginning. The word was, on the radio, the condition was called “Stormy.” And the word was that in our area that there were approximately a regiment-sized group of North Vietnamese regulars coming across; they had come across from Cambodia, and in the direction from which they were coming is where this village of Tuy Lon was. We knew they were coming. We knew approximately when they would get there, but at no time was there any move made to evacuate the village. ¶

And that night, I believe it was the night of February 23rd, we were hit by the North Vietnamese, and we had to shoot back. In shooting back, many of our rounds seemed to go into the village. The next morning, after the fighting was over — we had received reinforcements, air strikes, artillery — I had to go back to my battalion, and in walking out I walked out of the outpost at the same time that some of the villagers were bringing casualties in. They were bringing them up to the hill apparently for medical treatment. I don’t know if they ever received it because I didn’t stick around. I had to leave, but I tried to avoid seeing any of the casualties. ¶

But I couldn’t miss one. One was a girl, approximately age twelve to fourteen, with an enormous bullet hole in her mid-section. Apparently, I would say it was probably from a 50-caliber machinegun, which is what I had to man while I was there.

The 50-caliber machinegun — I didn’t know it at the time but apparently it is not to be used according to the Geneva Accords on ground troops. We were forced to use them on ground troops. The 50-caliber machinegun is an anti-aircraft we