The My Lai Chain

The Army's slow-moving and presumably painstaking investigation into the killing of South Vietnamese civilians at My Lai is beginning to climb the chain of command. The Army charged Lieut. William L. Calley Jr., leader of a platoon that swept through the village on March 16, 1968, with the murder of 102 people. Three enlisted men in Galley's unit were also accused. Last week Calley's immediate superior at the time, Captain Ernest Medina, commanding officer of C Company in the American Division's 11th Infantry Brigade, was charged with murdering four civilians and assaulting a fifth.

Instinctive Firing. Shortly after members of his company began talking publicly about the tragedy last November, Medina appeared on television and at a Washington press conference to claim that he saw "no shooting of any innocent civilians whatsoever" in the My Lai attack. He did admit personally killing a woman, explaining that he had fired instinctively, thinking she was armed, when she moved suddenly. He sharply denied the account of one of his soldiers, who said that he saw Medina shoot a boy. The charges against Medina now include those two deaths. They also include the alleged murder of two civilians who were held for questioning after the fighting had stopped. Medina had claimed earlier that two Viet Cong suspects had been killed by South Vietnamese police and that he had protested this action. Charged with Medina in those two killings is Captain Eugene M. Kotouc, an intelligence officer in the Americal Division.

Three other enlisted men of Medina's company were charged last week with various offenses at My Lai, including rape, murder and assault with intent to commit murder, bringing the number of men officially accused so far to ten. They include one other officer, Captain Thomas K. Willingham, who was in charge of a platoon in another company operating about two miles from Medina's group during the assault. Five other men still in the service are under investigation, as are 22 members of Medina's company who are now civilians. The Army and the Justice Department are still studying whether the civilians can be prosecuted under military law.

Cover Up? The Army has also completed a nonjudicial inquiry into the affair--an attempt to find out whether a massacre actually took place and, if so, whether any Army officers attempted to cover it up. Investigators working under Lieut. General William R. Peers have interrogated 398 witnesses, and the group is now working on its report. The continued filing of charges indicates that the Army is convinced that a massacre did occur.

The question of a possible attempt to quash the incident is another issue. The chain of command went from Calley to Medina, then to Lieut. Colonel Frank A. Barker Jr., who has since died in combat. Barker's boss was Colonel Oran Henderson, then commander, 11th Infantry Brigade, which was under Major General Samuel Koster, the Americal Division commander, who is now superintendent at West Point. It seems likely that the full Peers report will not be released and that no other trials will be held until after Calley's court-martial, which is now set for May 18 at Fort Benning, Ga.

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A similar and more recent case is also under investigation. Five Marine enlisted men have been charged with murdering eleven children and five women last month at the hamlet of Son Thang, about 27 miles south of Danang. All are members of the 1st Battalion of the 1st Marine Division's 7th Regiment. A military board convened at Danang last week and will decide whether the five must face court-martial.

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