Newly Discovered Army Reports Discredit “Winter Soldier” Claims

Newly Discovered Army Reports Discredit "Winter Soldier" Claims

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=5AA13DC0-481C-46BC-AF88-D5FE933B3216

By Scott Swett
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, February 25, 2008

From March 13-16, 2008, members of the antiwar group Iraq Veterans
Against the War (IVAW) will gather in Washington, DC to "testify"
against the US military at a protest event called Winter Soldier:
Iraq & Afghanistan. The name "Winter Soldier" is taken from the
infamous 1971 event at which members of the Vietnam Veterans Against
the War (VVAW) related gruesome stories of crimes they claimed to
have participated in or witnessed. The VVAW insisted that rape,
torture and murder were standard practices for the US military in
Vietnam. Organizers of the new IVAW tribunal, which is supported by
several former VVAW leaders, say the 1971 conference was where "a
courageous group of veterans exposed the criminal nature of the
Vietnam War." In reality, it was part of a sophisticated, vicious
propaganda effort designed to poison public opinion against the US
military. Newly discovered records now reveal what happened when Army
investigators asked VVAW activists for evidence of the hundreds of
crimes they claimed to have seen.

In our book, To Set The Record Straight: How Swift Boat Veterans,
POWs and the New Media Defeated John Kerry, Tim Ziegler and I trace
the course of the anti-US war crimes propaganda campaign, which began
in Europe with KGB-sponsored events that were organized before the
first US ground troops ever arrived in Vietnam. In 1969, leaders of
those conferences helped American radicals form the "Citizens
Commission of Inquiry into US War Crimes in Indochina" (CCI), which
set up a series of so-called investigations where US military actions
in Vietnam were compared to those of Nazi Germany during World War
II. The CCI soon joined forces with the VVAW, another leftist group
created with financing and assistance from members of the Communist
Party, USA, the Socialist Workers Party and the communist front
Veterans for Peace.

The VVAW's Winter Soldier Investigation (WSI) took place in Detroit
from Jan. 31 through Feb. 2, 1971. Financed primarily by pro-Hanoi
actress Jane Fonda, the event's honorary national coordinator, WSI
was the largest war crimes tribunal held in the US during the Vietnam
War. Several of the discussion panel moderators were radical leaders
who had previously met with top North Vietnamese and Vietcong
representatives in Hanoi and Paris. Also present were leftist
psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and clinicians, who pressured the
witnesses to help end the war by publicly confessing their "crimes."
Former VVAW member Steve Pitkin later recalled how the civilians went
from man to man, "bombarding them; laying on the guilt." Pitkin
signed an affidavit in 2004 charging that John Kerry and other VVAW
leaders had coerced him into making a false statement.

WSI was the source of the allegations John Kerry presented to the
Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in April 1971, at a hearing set
up by antiwar Senators to showcase the VVAW's atrocity tales. The
highly publicized appearance launched Kerry's political career and
helped to create a lasting image of Vietnam veterans as drugged-out
murderers too damaged to function in normal society. Justice was
served in 2004 when a political movement led by some of the veterans
John Kerry had defamed sank his presidential bid.

Investigating the winter soldiers

In 2005, I visited the National Archives at College Park, Maryland
with Vietnam veteran and researcher John Boyle. Sifting through the
limited material available, we found summary data for the WSI
allegations the Army had investigated. The Army's Criminal
Investigative Division (CID) had opened cases for 43 WSI "witnesses"
whose claims, if true, would qualify as crimes. An additional 25 Army
WSI participants had criticized the military in general terms,
without sufficient substance to warrant any investigation.

The 43 WSI CID cases were eventually resolved as follows: 25 WSI
participants refused to cooperate, 13 provided information but failed
to support the allegations, and five could not be located. No
criminal charges were filed as a result of any of the investigations.
The individual CID case files, which had been available to the public
beginning in 1994, were withdrawn from public access around 2003,
when the National Archives realized that the documents should have
been embargoed until the personal information they contained could be
removed, or "redacted," as required by the Privacy Act of 1974.

Early in 2007, Boyle learned that a historian had copied the entire
collection of CID war crime investigation summaries at the National
Archives, including those involving the VVAW, while they were still
publicly available. The historian permitted Boyle to photocopy these
documents, which we have now posted at WinterSoldier.com:

Army CID Investigations of VVAW War Crimes Allegations

The CID summary reports are revealing. Most of the WSI participants
refused to provide evidence to support their allegations. Some made
statements that were contradicted by other witnesses, were
discredited, or were not substantiated by subsequent investigation.

Several of the VVAW activists backtracked significantly on their WSI
statements:

· Douglas Craig claimed at WSI that members of his battalion had
fired mortar rounds each night into a local dump, intentionally
killing civilians who were scavenging for food. Craig told
investigators he had no direct knowledge of these events and
expressed misgivings about making allegations in Detroit he could not
substantiate.

· Larry Craig claimed at WSI that he watched US soldiers murder a
Vietnamese civilian and, on another occasion, desecrate Vietnamese
graves. Craig admitted to investigators that the man who was killed
could have been Vietcong, and that the soldier allegedly digging in a
cemetery could have been looking for weapons caches.

· Donald Donner claimed at WSI that Army personnel had murdered a
Vietnamese male, intentionally wounded a 14-year-old Vietnamese girl,
indiscriminately slaughtered livestock and failed to bury enemy dead.
Donner admitted to the CID that his stories were actually lies,
rumors and accounts of accidental events.

· John Lytle claimed at WSI that his unit murdered civilians by
destroying villages with artillery fire without making any effort to
determine who was there. However, Lytle told the CID that the
villages were actually fired on because it was suspected that
Vietcong occupied them and incoming fire had been received from the area.

· Robert McConnachie claimed at WSI that Army troops in a convoy
threw C-ration cans at Vietnamese children with such force as to kill
one or two. He also said an artillery unit had intentionally shelled
a hospital and killed civilians. McConnachie backtracked when
questioned by military investigators, saying that no Vietnamese
children were actually killed by troops throwing C-rations. He said
he now believed that the alleged killing of civilians in a hospital
by artillery fire was accidental.

· Ronald Palosaari claimed at WSI that Army troops killed two
children and an old lady by throwing a grenade into a bunker next to
a house. He also said he saw a Vietnamese soldier cut off the ear of
a NVA soldier who had just been killed. Interviewed by Army
investigators, Palosaari was unable to provide specific dates,
locations or the names of any individuals involved in the alleged
grenade incident. He admitted that he did not actually witness the
mutilation of any enemy dead.

· Donald Pugsley claimed at WSI that a helicopter gunship strafed and
killed water buffalo. He admitted to investigators that no water
buffalo were actually fired upon.

· Kenneth Ruth claimed at WSI to have witnessed the torture of
Vietcong suspects, and told Life Magazine that he saw troops test
fire weapons into a village, wounding 43 civilians. However, Ruth
admitted to Army investigators that he had no personal knowledge of
such an event. The CID found his torture claims unsubstantiated.

· George Smith claimed at WSI that members of his Special Forces unit
had beaten enemy prisoners and placed them in small barbed-wire
cages. Smith backtracked on these claims when interviewed by Army
investigators, saying that the alleged acts were actually committed
by South Vietnamese forces rather than American troops.

· David Stark claimed at WSI that hundreds of Vietnamese civilians
were killed by indiscriminate bombing and strafing in the Saigon area
during late 1968. He also claimed to have witnessed the maltreatment
of prisoners. However, Stark told CID interviewers that he actually
saw no bodies, was unable to identify the aircraft or military units
involved in the attacks or the cleanup operation, and admitted that
he had never witnessed maltreatment of prisoners, except for a single
occasion when he said he saw a prisoner pushed and shoved by two
South Vietnamese officers.

The only Army witness to appear at WSI whose allegations have been
substantiated was James Henry. Military authorities closed Henry's
case, which had already been under review for nearly a year by the
time of WSI, after "an extensive investigation did not reveal
sufficient evidence to prove or disprove Mr. Henry's allegations."
However, the CID also opened a supplemental investigation into
whether a group of civilians had been killed by US troops. The
results of that investigation indicate that crimes were probably
committed, but no documentation of any prosecutions has been found or reported.

The Naval Investigative Service (NIS) was ordered to investigate
charges made at WSI by VVAW members representing themselves as
veterans of the Navy or Marines. Their reports have not been located,
and it is uncertain whether they were destroyed or are lost in the
vast government archives system. Historian Guenter Lewy cited a
summary report by NIS in his 1978 book America in Vietnam, noting
that many participants refused to provide evidence to Navy
investigators, and others backtracked on their stories – the same
pattern found in the newly discovered Army CID documents. Lewy also
reported that several veterans told the NIS in sworn statements
corroborated by witnesses that they had not been in Detroit – i.e.,
the VVAW activists who used their names were imposters.

It is unfortunate that the military didn't simply release the results
of the investigations as they were completed. America's Vietnam
veterans might have been spared several decades of public distrust
and contempt stimulated by the leftist "baby-killer" agitprop.
Unfortunately, US military leaders during the Vietnam era failed to
understand that home-front psychological warfare operations pose at
least as great a threat to the military's ability to successfully
complete its mission as enemy operations in the field.

The (not so) new winter soldiers

Among the VVAW retreads supporting the IVAW's new propaganda campaign
is Joe Bangert, a former Marine mechanic who claimed at WSI that he
had watched while his fellow Americans casually gunned down
Vietnamese children and murdered and skinned a Vietnamese woman.
Bangert, a fervent supporter of America's wartime enemies, met in
1971 with North Vietnamese and Vietcong delegations in Paris, where
he proudly sang "We Will Liberate the South," and the "Ballad of
Uncle Ho" for his hosts. He later moved to join his comrades in
communist Vietnam, where he lived for several years.

Members of the military with actual knowledge of crimes committed by
US troops in Iraq or Afghanistan have a legal and moral obligation to
report them to military authorities. The activists who will claim in
Washington that they saw or participated in such crimes presumably
failed to do this. What are we to make of "witnesses" who ignore
crimes while in the field, but later make allegations in a venue
designed to smear the military and its mission? Add the
near-certainty that the charges themselves will be vague, lacking the
specific details and supporting evidence that real investigations
require. Perhaps this time we should assume that the troops who
defend us are innocent when they are accused of unsubstantiated
"crimes" by a radical movement with a long history of deceit.

In light of the new CID documents, will John Kerry admit that the war
crime allegations he presented to the Senate in 1971 were largely
fictitious? When the Winter Soldier documentary is shown to college
students, will liberal professors now point out that it has been
thoroughly discredited? Will the Washington Post reconsider its
credulous 2005 film review? Can we expect the new discovery to be
reported accurately on Wikipedia's leftist-controlled Winter Soldier
page? Will the IVAW radicals currently preparing their own attack on
the US military be embarrassed to learn that they are emulating a fraud?

Not a chance. WSI was always about perceptions; never reality.
America's detractors will peddle the VVAW's grisly myths for as long
as people are willing to believe them.
---

Scott Swett is the primary author of a new book on the 2004
presidential campaign, To Set The Record Straight: How Swift Boat
Veterans, POWs and the New Media Defeated John Kerry. He is also the
primary webmaster of WinterSoldier.com and SwiftVets.com.