There's no place to escape to, this is the last talk on the left. That's one of the cannon bullets I'm starting. Sometimes I wake up in a bad mood, you know, and I just get a little angry, you know, I'll go outside and I'll destroy a pile of ants. I'm just saying I just do it. Hit it with the hose, sometimes one time I cooked up a bunch of grease and I put it on the end pile and I watched all the ants die. I did it. So this is a confession. I love them anyway. I do love to kill flies. Okay. I love killing flies. I actually like to kill flies. Yeah. Bugs in the house? Dead for sure. Yes. Except for spiders. Yeah. I save spiders and I take them out. I don't save every spider. Yeah, I really enjoy watching spiders eat other insects. My favorite. So I actually, I keep, there's a lot of spider webs around my house, massive spider webs. I watch them. So I can watch them eat my enemies. Oh, that's nice. On top of question. Okay. We had a little bit of a sidebar when we did brighter side industry. Sure. Better? All right. Before we get into how horrifying today is going to be. Sure. It's just war four films. Because we were talking about this is that. So right now in my mind, right, it's like, obviously from the American perspective, World War II, Vietnam have the best war based films because obviously mass, you can go fuck. Here's the problem. Here's the problem. Here's the problem. We all hate mass. Yeah. Yeah. We all hate mass. Yeah. The movies are cooler, but World War II might have made better films. I think, yes, Vietnam does have the better soundtrack, but World War II has the better plots. Yes. Saving Private Ryan. You got a apocalypse now is the best plot. It is. No. And you know, that's my second favorite movie. I love a apocalypse now, but overall, I think World War II just has more opportunities for different types of stories because Vietnam is one story. You want to see almost every person who gets killed, get killed in the World War II movies. Yeah. And the Vietnam movies, you don't want anyone to get killed. Yeah. Or sometimes you want that one guy to get killed. You're a baringer. Yes. Always. Oh, and here we are. Ladies and gentlemen, we're here on me live, part four, and I must say this is the longest script I've ever written. Great. And we're going to get all the way through this and we want to say thank you for joining us in this wonderful trip down through the jungle. And I just got to say, Marcus, I've loved every minute of it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Me, lie. You tell the truth. Eddie, stop it. Eddie, Eddie, save it. No, I don't think I could be able to make jokes. No, we're not allowed. We are not allowed to. We will have to figure that out. So when we last left Charlie Company, it was the night before the mission that would take them into the village of me lie. Charlie Company was acting on the orders of Task Force Barker, which had been charged with clearing out the Vietcong soldiers who were supposedly hiding in a civilian heavy area of South Vietnam called Pinkville. Now, in addition to their general task of conducting search and destroy missions within Pinkville, Task Force Barker had gotten intelligence that the hated and feared 48th Vietcong battalion had retreated back to the province containing Pinkville after the Tet Offensive. That's the Quang Nai Province. Sure. But before we get into the massacre itself because fucking Christ, we can't start with the massacre. Let's talk about where they got the information that sent them to me lie. It is, as it's been with this whole series, another important piece of the puzzle when it comes to how all this happened. See, in March of 1968, the Army had received intelligence that narrowed the location of the 48th from the entire Quang Nai Province, specifically down to the village of me lie. This intelligence, however, had been obtained through a CIA-backed initiative within South Vietnam called the Phoenix Program. Caw! No, they're more of a scream. Caw! This is on fire, yes, yes it. It's more of a scream than a car, yeah. Caw! Also, Pinkville, better known as Poon Tang. I got it. I got it. You really honestly got it. No, it's great. You got it. You got it. Even Valleys, my friend, Pinkson Valleys. Even though the CIA had been in Vietnam as advisers since the mid-1950s, they had just started the Phoenix Program in February of 1968 when they obtained the information that led to the me lie massacre. From 1968 until 1972, the CIA coordinated operations between the American and South Vietnamese militaries. Amongst other activities, including assassination, Project Phoenix involved the brutal torture of North Vietnamese soldiers to obtain information. And that torture was conducted by both South Vietnamese and CIA officials. Over 26,000 Vietnamese people were killed as a result of Project Phoenix. That's through assassinations or by dying during torture. And this was all done with not only the blessing of the CIA, but with their direct training. How would they torture them? I'm about to get into that. Okay, cool. Great. Now, the Phoenix Program was under the command of a CIA veteran called Robert Ramsdol. Now, Ramsdol wasn't allowed to say, "Hey, all CIA here." No. So, it was said that Ramsdol was sent to Vietnam as an adviser to the special police branch of the South Vietnamese government. Personally, though, Ramsdol had quite the high opinion of himself. He considered himself the hub of the CIA's wheel in Vietnam. And like any good company man, Ramsdol was not afraid to get his hands dirty by torturing North Vietnamese prisoners himself. Let me get in. A doctor named Margaret Nelson testified during a congressional hearing in 1970 that as a part of the Phoenix Program, she had treated dozens of Vietnamese prisoners who had been tortured by electricity with wires that were attached to their ears, nipples, and genitalia. These were also tied up and suspended from rafters, upside down, were left there for hours, and many were beaten so badly that they regularly coughed up and/or urinated blood. And as it went, it was Robert Ramsdol, working on behalf of Project Phoenix, who showed up near Pinkville to interrogate a North Vietnamese prisoner using these tactics in March of 1968. Allegedly, Robert Ramsdol used a branding iron on this prisoner's stomach during the interrogation and he even cut out his tongue. >> Seems counterproductive. >> Yeah, I don't want to hear anything there. >> Well, you know, you get one of those boards and you know, until he gets to A, you know, C, yeah. >> No, I figured you could also take those sign language interpreters we had at Midsummer Screen. >> Yeah. >> Ma'am, have you ever worked for the CIA? >> Yes. >> But by the end of it, the prisoner had given Ramsdol the location of the 48th Viet Kong battalion. Ramsdol contacted Task Force Barker with this intelligence and told them that the 48th battalion was headquartered at a village in Pinkville called Me Lie. >> You know, it's crazy. If you look up the Phoenix program, the first thing comes up weirdly enough as a Japanese RPG created by creative intelligence arts. >> Interesting. >> No, weird. >> That is weird. >> It's, yeah. It buys the CIA. >> Yeah. It's the only Japanese Phoenix related thing. I know of is a, you know, Phoenix attorney at law, yes, attorney at law, objection. And now, at long last, we have arrived at the massacre itself. So, the operation that resulted in the Me Lie massacre was an early morning affair. After Charlie Company got a night's rest following the rousing pep talk in which their captain Ernest Mad Dog Medina had promised them revenge and told them to kill everyone they found. The first platoon boarded nine helicopters at 7.22 AM. >> Now, you guys got your phone chargers, you got all, you're ready to go, you got your plugs. >> All right. Everybody had breakfast? >> Has everybody downloaded their podcast? >> Yeah. >> Make sure we're not going to get, you're going to need it when we're air bound because they don't have Wi-Fi on these yet. >> That's probably what happened though. They'll skip breakfast. >> A little bit cranky. >> You know what? >> Yeah. >> I'm just going to help you. >> To put everything into perspective here, this was actually the largest military operation happening in all of Vietnam that day. Colonel Barker had actually borrowed helicopters from other units and all the air space around Me Lie was cleared of any other traffic. In fact, before the first platoon even arrived, between 60 and 100 artillery shells rained down on the village of Me Lie. The CIA had given them intelligence that the 48th battalion was there, so the army was doing everything they could to soften the village up before sending in the troops. This was standard practice. >> They were literally thought they were going in for the fight of their lives against the hardest fucking killers in all of Vietnam. >> Oh yeah. And they're incredibly green. >> Yeah. They're very green. They're three months into it. To catch any vietcong that might flee the area, Task Force Barker had also set up blocking positions north and south of Me Lie. all the say that as far as the
The army was concerned, this was 100% a legitimate mission that was expected to be a massive battle between American soldiers and a deadly battalion of VC. One member of Charlie Company even remembers that their commanders frame this operation as having, and this was his words, Shades of Iwo Jima, as such Charlie Company was told to pack triple the regular amount of ammunition when they went to Mealye and they were told that everyone within Mealye was either a VC or they were supporting the VC. And so after two months of Charlie Company being mined and booby trapped and sniped by an unseen enemy, two months of multiple fatalities and dozens of casualties that had resulted in a fair amount of lost limbs, Charlie Company were told that they were going to be facing the enemy head on in Mealye at long last, but as anyone with half a fucking brain knows, intelligence obtained through torture is rarely if ever correct. And what Charlie Company found when they got to Mealye was not in any way Shades of Iwo Jima. Instead, Charlie Company's actions would contain Shades of a different World War II event, the Holocaust. Yeah, it does not help, yeah, it's not the Holocaust. Hold on, are you saying we shouldn't have cut out the tongue of the guy? Wow. I feel like that's a boner. I'll be, that's my new nickname, that's my new catch phrase for today. That's a boner. That's a real boner. I like jizzle, weasel. Yeah. Oh, great. Now, Charlie Company did know that they were going to encounter civilians that morning. Mealye was populated by around 700 people, and most of those villagers lived in that covered huts that the GI's called Huches or Houses built from Red Brick. So this is like the size of the town you grew up in? Actually, it's a little larger. It's almost twice as large as the town I grew up in. Fucking crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Wow, we could have done it real good, huh? We could have killed all y'all, you wouldn't even know. Really good. Yeah, yeah, really good. This operation, however, was on a Saturday. So Charlie Company were told that many of the women and children within this village would be gone to market at nearby Quang Nai City. So the GI's were not expecting to find a lot of civilians, some, but not a lot. So minutes after the artillery stopped their barrage, the first platoon landed at the LZ just outside the village of Mi Lai, led by who else, but Lieutenant William Callie. Callie was not the first to kill someone that day. In fact, people had already started dying before Callie and the rest of Charlie Company even landed. So after the artillery had begun, hundreds of civilians had started running towards the direction of Quang Nai City, but if you remember, Captain Mad Dog Medina had given very specific orders the night before about such a situation. He had said, quote, if they're running, they're the enemy. So the helicopter gunships opened up on the fleeing crowd, killing dozens. Helicopter crews would continue to shoot and kill fleeing villagers throughout this mission. And by the end of the day, between 30 and 50 people would be killed by helicopter crews, while these people were simply trying to flee the carnage that had begun their Saturday morning. Do you think like maybe like Medina like bit his cheek earlier that day because I did that the other day. I was eating a ham sandwich from upstairs. Thank you for providing sandwiches. Your cheeks are getting too thick. I know. And I bit into it. I bit my cheek and then, you know, and then you every time you get swollen and then you keep biting it and you just get angry here and anger and anger here. And then I went home and I yelled at Ernie, my dog, and he didn't deserve it. He's a good boy. This is one of the other puzzle pieces of how Mi Lai happened and they're all important. Now, Lieutenant Callie's orders when he got on the ground was to secure the landing zone for the second wave of helicopters. Before Callie even landed, a pilot had told him that the LZ was hot, meaning Callie was under the impression that they were going to land under VC fire. There is, however, no evidence that any shots were fired from any Vietnamese person that day. They really needed Tony Hinchcliffe. He would have tormed a piece in his color. But because Charlie Company were told that they were landing under fire, Callie and the rest of the first platoon jumped out of their choppers that morning at 7.30am and immediately opened fire on every Vietnamese person they saw. They started by firing directly towards the village because they were told that the village was full of VC and most of the civilians had gone to market. They also did not want to get pinned down at the landing zone by enemy fire. This happened fairly often in Vietnam, but there was still no returning fire at all, so Callie reported the LZ as secure. The helicopters then went back to base to get the other platoons while Callie and his men entered the village of Mielin to find and kill the 48th battalion. Quite quickly though, it became apparent that the 48th battalion was not there. The villagers had actually been in the middle of breakfast when the artillery started, but not a single villager was showing an ounce of resistance towards the American troops. Callie's platoon walked further into the village, but found nothing but old men, women, and children. Everyone was cowering, terrified. And here we have the moment on which this entire story turns. Charlie Company had every chance to radio back and say, "There's no VC in Mielin. It's a bust." But Charlie Company was already keyed up. Their heads were full of vengeance and fear. According to the recollection of one Charlie Company GI, a couple of the so-called "crazy guys" in the platoon turned to Callie and said that these villagers must be VC, because Charlie Company had been told that everyone in the village was VC. So, following orders in a way that only McNamara's mons could, Charlie Company decided to leave logic and basic human decency behind. Just as commanders manipulated body accounts to get the results they wanted, Charlie Company interpreted their orders to get what they wanted. They had been promised revenge, and they were going to get it. And so, after one soldier introduced the idea that all the villagers were VC, the GI's just started shooting the villagers. And once the first civilian was killed, it was too late to turn back. Charlie Company had committed, and once they were committed to the idea that everyone in the village was VC, then they could justify any action they took. They were not committing war crimes. They were following orders. And those orders were to not stop until everyone was dead, and the village was destroyed. "Geez, weasel!" He really helped. It just really feels good to be of service, this is what I would have done to Vietnam. Thank you for your service. This is my Vietnam. We were talking about Vietnam's and how inappropriate it is to say that this is my Vietnam, but finding humor in Vietnam is my Vietnam. I always thought like to a situation like that, as if I was ever going to Reikers on the bus over. I'd be like, "Hey, everyone, welcome to Yaikers Island." Okay, now, everybody, before you want to beat and rape me to death, you're going to want to line up. I need you to line up just because, all right, we had to do this in an order. I've actually brought name tags in, and I got a pen, but here you can just write that down. You Mr. Pile Driver, tiny guy! Now the massacre began with various one-on-one murders, as if the soldiers were trying it out to see how it felt. At 7.35 a.m., an old man climbed out of a hole, waving his arms and fear, one of Kelly's men shot and killed him, and soon after, another GI shot and killed a man who was standing dumbfounded near a rice patty. In there, members of Charlie Company just shot anyone they came across. One GI killed a woman running across a field carrying a child, while another woman was killed carrying two children. Two young men were killed the same way, just casually shot, simply for existing within the village of Mealye. By the time the helicopters returned to the village, with the second and third platoons at 8 a.m., Kelly's platoon had killed 17 more villagers, but the massacre was just getting started. Now things could have turned around even at this point, because after 40 minutes on the ground, there still had not been a single shot fired at Charlie Company, but since Kelly's platoon was committed, the platoons who came after them were committed as well. So instead of stopping, Charlie Company escalated the cruelty to the next level. Once the platoons got to the houses where the villagers were hiding, GI's began entering homes and pulling people outside to interrogate them. After gathering one group of villagers, the GI's, without warning, just started stabbing the prisoners with bayonets or shooting them. From there, the GI's began expanding on their methods of murder, as if they were serial killers, speedrunning their experimentation phase. But started as shootings and stabbings soon turned into methods of murder so varied that one GI said that he couldn't even remember all the ways that Vietnamese people
were killed that day. Concerning the use of grenades, for example, G.I.s took an old man and threw him down a well. Then they dropped a live hand grenade inside after the old man to finish him off and poison the well water. One survivor who was just a child at Mealai remembered that he was huddled with his family inside their house when a grenade bounced inside and killed everyone but him. He was left covered in the gore and blood that it once been his parents and siblings. He just had to wait. He just had to sit in it until the Americans decided to leave. Entire families were slaughtered that day and not just with grenades. Another survivor who was just a child at the time saw his parents and grandparents shot dead in front of him. Each was shot one by one. The G.I. shooting even shot this kid's three year old brother directly in the head. Kids had exploded right in front of him. This is more like Columbine than war. Yeah. It's a free shooting. It is very much a free shooting. It's literally shooting fish in a barrel. It's kind of way they described it. Well, they described the other fight against the Americans. But you wonder if somebody already had a Vietnam. Do they get a new Vietnam? Like, you know, if you've been through Vietnam and you're like, you know, I was in the old Vietnam, but I got to say replacing all my current apartment's furniture with IKEA furniture, that's my new Vietnam. And you think that when he goes to sleep, he's like, you know, at night, I go back to old Vietnam. But then we go to my brand new Vietnam because the furniture is so hard and it's so difficult and it's quick and it's Swedish. What's up? You're kidding. You know, you never even think about it. You should work for the VA. Thank you. So here we go. I got my Ho Chi Minh Puppet. I do the Ho Chi Minh Puppet. They love it. At the VFW, I can do Hanoi Henry's a proud. They don't mind it. They seem to encourage me. Throwing money at me. There's just the other guy he's getting, we're doing shows together. It's Hanoi Henry and his name's Baghdad Barry. Is your Baghdad? Yeah. Wow. Wow. He's funny. Now that's common. Yeah, sad um, who's saying, stop it. Stop it. You're blowing my shit. You're blowing my material. Stop it. Now, the two children, I just mentioned, they only survived the slaughter of their families because the members of Charlie Company either didn't notice them or believe them to be dead because children were not in any way exempt from the slaughter that day. A group of 15 to 20 children were found huddled together in a temple, kneeling and praying. But a group of GIs found them while exploring the village and they executed the kids on the spot. But even to this day, some of the GIs in Charlie Company will maintain on camera, no less, that their orders were to kill everyone in that village and it wasn't their fault that children just happened to live there. Certain Charlie Company veterans, therefore, claim to have no regrets as to what they did that morning because they were only doing what they had been trained to do. I said regrets, though, no regrets, that's super funny, it's very cute, it's very, it's a maze balls. That's a lot of it. It's a lot of it. Super maze balls. Now, I of course don't agree with the no guilt part, but this GI does have a point that these guys were trained to do exactly this and members of Charlie Company had seen examples of this happening on a smaller scale for months by this point and they'd also been doing it for months. They've been escalating little by little. In fact, the men of Charlie Company had seen soldiers get rewarded over and over for doing just this sort of thing, but as far as we know, it had never been done on the scale that it was done in me lie. But it could have. It might have. That's the crazy part. There might be worse situations than me lie because they killed everybody. We might know. They might have just killed everyone. We also just fire bomb places. So who knows what would be up. Well, we know, and there are, I mean, you know, pictures of little girls running down the road, a naked, covered napalm because all the clothes have been burned off. So yeah, we know, but yeah, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of villages were burned to death. Oh, mentioning that picture. There reminds me. I got to change the background on my laptop because I've had that for so long as it's like burn on my apple. I get it. I get it. That isn't to say that some GIs did changing it to Kathy Ireland. Oh, Kathy Ireland now or Kathy Ireland, like, 1994, but her head's cheeseburger. Yeah. It's a little more pleasant. That isn't to say that some GIs didn't regret what they did in me lie. One GI named Varnado Simpson, who finally died by suicide in 1997 after he just couldn't fucking live with it anymore. Simpson said that he personally committed atrocities against these villagers. He said that he cut their throats. He cut off their hands. He cut out their tongues. He scalped them. He said that he lost all direction that day, but he also said he was not the, but he also said that he was not the one who started this carnage. He claimed that he was just following the lead of the other GIs and the brutality of their actions just continued to increase as the massacre went on. Wanted starts with stabbing, then it moves on to something bigger and something bigger and something bigger. Can I ask you though, Varnado, can you do quick books? I know that this is like, we've been asking your flaws in this interview and I really appreciate your kind. We really just need to know if you can work with Microsoft teams. I'm more familiar with Slack, but we'll cut you some slack. I won't let you join the matter of what you've done. Well, these GIs, they were soon realizing, perhaps even subconsciously, that they could do whatever they wanted with these people, every ugly impulse, every violent thought they'd ever had, every shred of anger that lived in their souls. It could all be unleashed on these people in this village at this very moment. And as far as they knew, there would be no consequences. Now, do you think there was like one like nice soldier that hugged somebody to death? Yeah, Lenny. The great irony here is that since Charlie Company became so immediately focused on murdering civilians, they actually missed the one VC who was actually in the village, a deputy commander in the Vietcong hid when he heard the artillery. And this guy could only watch as the GIs murdered the villagers. These were people he knew, eventually a group of 80 villagers were heard into a plaza by three GIs and at 8.15 a.m., Cali radioed from his position and told his soldiers to quote, "waste them." The three soldiers stood 15 feet from the villagers, just imagine that, 15 feet away, and emptied four clips each from their M-16 rifles before all 80 villagers were dead. They reloaded four times each. This tragically would only be the first mass execution of the day. There were actually so many bodies piling up that some villagers survived simply by hiding underneath the fresh corpses. The VC officer's mother and sister, in fact, survived by hiding under bodies and ditches. In other words, Charlie Company had not only committed war crimes, they had even failed to complete their mission to kill VC and VC sympathizers. But don't worry, we made a bunch more. Yeah, the thing is, like, no one ran out of the sky out. Which guy? The one VC. No. Well, that's the thing. Is that there really wasn't time. Yeah. They probably weren't even listening. They weren't. And by this point, the interrogations had stopped, and it's just, it's getting to the point where the mission does not matter anymore. They know that there's no VC here. They're just taking the opportunity. After a long while, a GI and Charlie Company's second platoon finally radioed Charlie Company's commander, Captain Mad Dog Medina, and told Medina that there were no Viet Cong in the village of me live. The only people there were elderly villagers, women, and children. Medina, however, he was also committed. So he ordered the platoon to keep going. Another group of civilians were lined up in front of a drainage ditch, and again, the soldiers executed them as if they were members of the Einsatzgruppen, liquidating Jewish populations across Eastern Europe, 1939, and that's an important thing to remember here. Names of these perpetrators were not Heinrich Oscar Adolfa Reinhardt. This is done by a guy's name Bill Ernest Herbert and Fred. These were Americans through and through, less than just a couple decades later. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So it's not like they weren't alive to know. Yeah. And also it's really just due to the unpopularity of the name Heinrich Oscar Adolfa. It's an Adolfa didn't care. There's not a lot of Heinrichs anymore. I could ask her. It could have been around. There were plenty of Oscars in Viet Nam. Yeah. And a dog name, Oscar. That's a nice dog name. Yeah. I bet you there was an Ed. Yeah. What? You think there was an Ed Nazi? No, in Viet Nam. Yeah. Oh, there was plenty of Ed. That's what I'm saying. Oh, a lot of Eddies. Yeah. A lot of guys just like you. Yeah. Contaminate your legs. You're gone. You're out of your legs. Thank God. Yeah. Otherwise I would have just lost some of Debbie. You hit me. You sent me to me. He's bringing me my basket. And I bet all the Henry's were Hanks. Yeah. Yeah. A Hank is a good name.
game for gay Henry. (laughing) Side stories, I'll
[email protected]. (laughing) Now once the bodies began filling that drainage ditch, Lieutenant Cali ordered more people to be tossed in the ditch and shot. Not all of those thrown in the ditch, however, died immediately. Several soldiers remembered seeing a very young boy covered in blood crawling his way out from the pile of murdered corpses. Those same soldiers watched as Lieutenant Cali grabbed the kid, threw him back amongst the bodies and murdered the child with his rifle himself. Well, he specifically absolutely hated children. He did, yeah, and he took the opportunity. Is that true? Yes. Yeah, he hated Vietnamese children. Oh, that's right! You put it up in the last episode. Yeah. Now while some soldiers focused on murder, others began the task of systematically destroying the village as per Captain Medina's orders. They poisoned the wells, scattered the food stocks, and set fire to anything that would burn, focusing particularly on the village's huches and houses. Once the domicile was set on fire, more villagers would run out to escape the flames, and those villagers were, of course, shot one by one. The GI's then moved on to the livestock. And the livestock slaughter was used as an opportunity to experiment. One GI stabbed a cow to death with a bayonet. Another group pumped a cow full of bullets until it killed over. Another GI used a grenade launcher to blow up a water buffalo at point blank ranges. One of those situations, you know, the always wanted to try this. Yeah, literally. Yeah, that's what me lie was. I always wanted to try this. In one bizarre scene, a soldier was just seen chasing around ducks with a knife. But one has to wonder if this guy merely found something to focus upon so he didn't have to participate or appear to disapprove of what the other soldiers were doing. Maybe it was part lab or? Yeah. (laughing) All right, he's ducks. I just can't believe how they decimated my stale bread collection. (laughing) I mean, if that was this guy's plan, it was a good plan. You focus on pretending to kill the ducks so you don't have to kill women and children by the hundreds. Yeah, I'll kill a million ducks. Yeah, oh yeah, I'll kill a million ducks before I kill one person, yeah? Yeah, are there any reports of like soldiers, like I thought you were gonna ask me, "Is there any number of ducks that you would not kill "and you want your maximum amount of ducks?" What is the count of ducks? Yes, I haven't actually got to get to the real problem here. It's like 4 million Vietnamese, and I want to say about 28 ducks. Yeah. It's like I got all this orange sauce. It's just burned in a fucking hole. (laughing) I'm talking, we actually, technically we invented it. General, so was an American. But my question was, were any of our soldiers killed by our soldiers, like not like trying to stick up for people? Not on this day, but we'll get to what they tried to do afterwards later on in the episode. Okay. The slaughter of the livestock only served a show just how much these GIs looked at Vietnamese villagers as animals, which was exactly what they'd been trained to think since boot camp. The guy who killed the water buffalo with a grenade launcher immediately handed it over to another GI who used that launcher to fire grenades and to bunkers full of people. Then there was the group who'd killed the cow by shooting it until it collapsed. While the cow was still dying, a woman poked her head out from behind some brush. Those GIs turned their fire from the cow to the woman and began pumping bullet after bullet into her body, long after she was dead. One GI remembered that you could see this woman's bones flying in the air. Chip by Chip. The GIs did it wordlessly because the questioning of the villagers had stopped altogether. The soldiers and me lie were now focused completely on slaughter. Technically, general so is it, was Asian. I just wanted to make sure I corrected that. So that people weren't all over me. Once they stopped the show because, you know, we do a little minor corrections. You know, obviously sometimes we speak off the cuff here. Yeah, and sometimes you know, maybe we're not super correct when we come up with it, but I just wanted to be transparent and say, yeah, he was Asian. And then it was brought over by Pinch and K. Yeah, okay. Thank you. Yeah, but was most popular in America. It was, yeah, popularized. Yeah. And Pad Thai was also like that was made for the American palate. Yeah, until the nut allergy fucking came through, through and everybody was, that's Thailand's Vietnam. Yeah, not the nut chow, not allergies. Now, once it became obvious that there was going to be no resistance from the villagers, some members of Charlie company decided to take their victims down into the next level of hell. Some GIs were going through victims clothing, searching for money, while others were raping villagers with all the brutality that they'd applied to the murders. And of course, killing the women just after. Some GIs were shouting and yelling throughout the massacre, obviously enjoying themselves, somewhere even laughing and joking. And as one GI who was there put it, when someone laughs and jokes about what they're doing, they're usually enjoying it. To laughing and joking, quite unfortunately, also included Charlie company's commander, Mad Dog Medina. While Mad Dog didn't enter me lie until Charlie company had totally secured the veil, he participated in the ultraviolence immediately upon his arrival. One GI said that as soon as Medina showed up, he made a beeline towards a Vietnamese girl. He knocked her to the ground with his rifle, but in shatter in the head. Mad Dog was absolutely enjoying himself, because after another GIs saw Mad Dog Medina, grab a woman by the hair and shoot her in the head with his pistol. Medina remarked that he'd censored to quote, "the big rice patty in the sky." - Now, are you sure just 'cause he was laughing, he was enjoying it because I'm not enjoying this. (laughing) - This sucks, but we are laughing right now. - We are laughing right now. - But you're not actively, if you were actively murdering and laughing, I think that's a difference. - Yeah, that's a difference, yeah. - For me. - Yeah, and we're all enjoying this on some level. - Well, I'm interested in history. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - You're right. - Yeah. - Learning about history is my Vietnam. (laughing) - Actually, you know what? I'm gonna go sign up for the serious contract. - Yeah, if you could please. I guess that we could. - You can really listen to it. - Yeah. - You can listen to it every time. (laughing) - Now, as incredible as this may sound, there was actually a photojournalist embedded with Charlie Company during its mission that day, but this is only unbelievable if you forget that Charlie Company was actually sent to me lie for what was supposed to be a legitimate battle against the Viet Cong. This was supposed to, and it was supposed to go well. This was supposed to be like something to make people feel good after the Tet Offensive. - It's like, look, we're getting back at him. We're doing something, and then the guys like, oh, no. - Oh, no. Soldiers in Vietnam, however, were so used to journalists being along for the ride that guys in Charlie Company either totally forgot that there was someone there documenting everything they did that day, or Charlie Company was never told that the journalist was there in the first place. But even after the soldiers realized a photographer was there, they still didn't change their behavior that much. - Well, I think it's because they thought they were following orders. - Mm-hmm. - And he was an army sergeant, so they probably thought he was on their side. - Of course. - When the photographer and army sergeant named Ronald Haberley came upon a group of soldiers surrounding a group of six villagers, three women, two children, and a man, the soldiers actually waved him over and said, hey, take a picture, take a picture. The photo Haberley took in that moment, a photo of absolutely terrified children, clutching an old woman, and this old woman's fate, I've never seen a face like this in my life. It is the utter essence of anguish and disbelief. That photo became one of the most important photos of the entire Vietnam War. It's up there with the guy getting shot in the head. Little girl naked and covered in napalm. For so many Americans, this was the photo that made the mask, what the fuck are we actually doing here? - But photographers are supposed to sort of stay, like in this state, they're kind of supposed to be like not involved, right? - No, no, that's supposed to be involved. - I believe the goal is you're supposed to stand from afar and be an objective view in. - What are you doing right now? Are you criticizing that he took the picture? - No, no, honestly, I'm mostly just trying to explain the idea of that's why he didn't step in. That's why he was saying stuff. He's literally just like, oh my God, he's like, click, it's like the movie Civil War. - Oh no, there's no way in hell that this guy could have done anything to stop anything. - Yes, and it's hard though, you know? Like, I mean, he did what he could, and you're gonna have to get into it. - Yeah, I mean, what's not often said, is that soon after Haverley took his photo, those soldiers shot and killed every single one of those villagers. Haverley witnessed soldiers cutting out tongues and scalping, person after person. And most of the photos he took that day were of dead bodies, but those photos were taken with his own personal camera. He knew what was happening that day and he knew that it was fucked and he knew that people had to see it. Because he took the photos with his personal camera, this allowed Haverley to avoid army censorship because they absolutely would have confiscated and buried his photos had they known that he had taken pictures that day. It's because of Haverley that we have no doubt as to what happened to me like. It was five.
more important for him to take these pictures and document it that it was for him to make some sort of feudal stand in which he'd get shot in the fucking head immediately. But to that point, when Haibily went back to America and showed the pictures of the bodies piled up on the road, or pictures of children who lay dead from bullet wounds to the face, he did not get the reaction he was expecting. Instead of outrage, the people from the local civic groups that he showed these pictures to, they responded without right denial. They refused to believe that this could have happened at the hands of American soldiers, and some even accused Haibily of faking the photos all together. How fucked up would I have to be to Photoshop this shit? Yeah. Like I didn't even do it. I didn't like post people put it all together and being like, yeah, now I'll take down the US army. Like no, he was a soldier. I understand, okay? I in a way like, you know, I don't think they're correct. Obviously, but you see something that's so outrageous. Yeah. That's so crazy. You're like, this cannot be true. Of course, this is too far. You're fucking making this up because you believe in America still. We see it all the time. We see it with people with crimes and people refuse to understand why they will do it. And so they'll come up with many different Byzantine other conspiracy theories around it to try to say that there's somebody in charge that they're trying to make sense. Try to make it make sense. If I was alive during then, it would have taken me a little while. I'd say probably a week of reading ship before I fully believed what happened. Sure. I understand that. Crazy. Yeah. Because it's fucked up. Now out of the hundreds some odd members of Charlie Company who entered me alive that day, only two GI's refused to participate in the mass murder. GI Roy Wood, for example, actually vomited when he saw the men in his platoon shoot an unarmed Vietnamese villager in the head. The other soldier in Charlie Company who refused to participate in anyway was GI Michael Bernhardt. And sure enough, he was almost killed for it. In the weeks after the massacre. And this is how people took care of trouble makers and Vietnam. You know, just shoot a guy in the head. What you do is you do what they did to Bernhardt. What Callie specifically did to Bernhardt? You send him out on long assignments all alone or you make them walk point every single time the platoon goes out into the countryside of the jungle. Point man, that's the guy who walks at the front of the patrol. Somebody's got to do it. And sure enough time after time, Bernhardt was given that job. Guy who's walking point is the one who's most likely to be killed by a buoy trap, a mine, or a sniper. Bernhardt was also refused medical treatment when he came down with a condition called jungle rot, which was similar to the world where a condition known as trench foot. Jungle rot was caused by bacteria, common and tropical climates. It invades the skin painfully and chronically. Turns the skin half a dozen colors go orange sometimes. It can lead to amputation. And while jungle rot itself is not fatal, it certainly weakens a soldier and leads him to mistakes that could get him killed. Lieutenant Callie, of course, refused to let Michael Bernhardt get his jungle rot treated in the weeks after me lie. So it is safe to say that Callie was doing everything he could to get rid of anyone who had objected to what Charlie Company had done in me lie that day. Did you have something at work? You look like you very much wanted to say something. I mean, I was just, you know, I had like a little quip that I was going to say if I was Bernhardt, you know, right on my shirt, like I double my shirt underneath my green shirt and just be like, say, uh, VCOK, USA behind me. That's all that's why I didn't say it. That's why I kept it in. But I'm glad I heard it now. I liked it. I liked Callie, however, was not the only one who tried silencing men who objected to the massacre that day. And that brings us to the only hero in this entire story helicopter pilot, Hugh Thompson. Now, Hugh Thompson had been a young funeral director when he joined the army in 1966 with hopes of becoming a pilot here in the spot flying helicopters. And he was shipped to Vietnam the same month that Charlie Company was December 1967. And by the time Charlie Company marched into me lie, Thompson had flown a fair amount of missions. And he had remained by all accounts a decent and honorable man. So, Hugh is the type of guy that people like to think of when they imagine the ideal American. I mean, these, these, when people talk about the ideal American, they do exist. It's just the problems that people start to think that every American is like this and we're not. No, it's like one out of a hundred. You're all named you, I think. Pretty much. And a lot of them are just working in a nice job, you know, just loving life, volunteer firefighters. Yeah. No, it's like, Hugh Thompson. He was a funeral director. I'm like, that's no, you have a funeral director is a job where you take care of your fucking community. Yes. And growing up, Hugh Thompson had been a literal boy scout who always stepped in to protect other kids when they were being bullied. And he acted no differently on March 16, 1968 as a man of principle. See, Thompson was not on the ground with Charlie Company. So the reality of the situation had to dawn on him moment by moment as Thompson circled me lie in his helicopter. When he saw a group of wounded Vietnamese on the ground, this is well into the massacre. He assumed that they had been accidentally shot in the crossfire. So he dropped a green smoke grenade to mark them for pickup and removal to a nearby hospital. Thompson then flew away from me lie to refuel. But when he returned at 9 a.m., he found that the people that he'd marked with green smoke, they were now dead. They'd obviously been shot by somebody in his absence. Thompson, however, I mean, it took a bit for him to reel out like, like, well, that's kind of weird. But I guess maybe somebody, I don't know what's going on here. Maybe somebody freaked out. Yeah. God knows, you know, he continued on and tossed another smoke grenade to mark another wounded woman. But then Thompson watched as a group of GIs led by Captain Mad Dog Medina walked up to the wounded woman. Thompson himself saw Medina put a boot on the woman before shooting her dead. Man, he must have been fucking haunted by giving anyone the benefit of the doubt. Oh, yeah. Mm hmm. From that day forward, Thompson then saw one of the ditches where Cali had ordered the mass execution of so many civilians because, you know, he's flying around up in the air and he sees like, holy shit, that ditch is full of dead bodies. Yeah. And he's the only one that really understands death. Yeah. Yeah. He's other guys are new. They've never really been in a battle like anything similar to this. He'd worked at a, um, he'd worked at a funeral home since he was in high school. He'd been around death for many, many years. So he understood the finale of it. Yeah. And it's at this point that Thompson felt is if he had no choice but to get involved in a moment of incredible bravery that he would continue throughout the morning. Thompson radioed the ground troops and told them that if he saw them kill one more woman or one more child, he was going to start shooting GI's himself. Thompson actually backed up that threat when he saw a group of women and children huddled together as a group of GI's approached them with obvious murderous intent. Thompson landed his helicopter and told his crewman to aim their weapons directly at the GI's on the ground. One sergeant in the murderous group told Thompson, hey, all we want to do is put these people out of their misery. And that tells you that by this point, all pretense of the villages being VC have been dropped. This is just crazy. It's like a crazy new validation that kind of comes out of just in the process of murder. Yeah. Like it kind of like it might even kind of continuing to say like, Oh, no, no, there's a good here. Yeah. Yeah. There's a good positive here. Don't worry, like you're actually hurting them right now. Yes. Yeah. You're you're keeping us from saving them. Yeah. Put you into your fucking misery. Yeah. And that, however, is the moment that Lieutenant William Callie showed up. After arguing with Hugh Thompson for a bit, Callie tried pulling his old trick to get soldiers in line by telling Thompson, quote, I'm a boss. But Thompson didn't give a fuck with this sniveling little coward had to say instead Thompson radioed for another helicopter to land and pick up the civilians who were just about to be murdered. And the other pilots, they did what Thompson asked. Callie did not have balls to open fire on Thompson. But he did complain after Thompson left that Callie was the boss, not some helicopter pilot. So funny. He couldn't stand up to him in the fucking moment. Couldn't do it. After he killed 100 people. Yes. And he wasn't even that he was not done yet because he needed to prove that he was the boss and to prove that he was the boss. Oh, yeah. He's trippling down. He ordered the GIs around him to return to the ditch and make sure that there were no survivors. Yeah. Because that's where all the bad people are in the fucking ditch. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, at this point, it's all pretenses gone. You know, it's now now it is kill everyone. Yes. Free fire time. Yeah. But that was just the first time that you Thompson squared up against his fellow soldiers on that morning. After leaving Callie, Thompson spotted a group of about 10 villagers running towards a bunker and they were being chased by several Charlie company soldiers. So Thompson landed his helicopter right in between the two groups and he told his crew to open fire on those fucking bastards. If they open fire on me or the civilians and as the crew trained their guns on their fellow Americans, Thompson was able to coax the villagers out of their bunker and get them on to another helicopter. After those civilians were for safely away. Tom.
in his crew returned to the ditch. One of Thompson's crewmen spotted movement amongst the bodies, and when they landed, that crewman found a child, crying and clinging to his dead mother. The crewman reached down and pulled the kid out of the body pit, then sent him to the South Vietnamese Army Hospital in Cuyne Nice City. That child survived, and he's still alive to tell this story to this day. Now, after all the houses were burned, the food was destroyed, and the livestock were killed. The GI's that had laid waste to me lie were more or less drifting aimlessly by 10-30am. That was around three hours after they had arrived. One GI named Herbert Carter just watched, as another GI named Fred Widmer wandered through the village shooting wounded civilians. Widmer asked for Carter's 45 pistol, and he used that pistol to kill a young boy by shooting him in the neck. After killing a few more wounded civilians, Widmer stopped only because the pistol jammed. Widmer handed the pistol back to Carter, but when Carter tried clearing the jammed round, the gun went off, and Carter accidentally shot himself in the foot. It was the only American casualty suffered at me lie, and it was described on the official report as a hostile gunshot wound. I mean, it was because he's a piece of shit killing people in a shot himself, yeah. Not too long after Carter shot himself in the foot, Hugh Thompson returned to base in his helicopter to report the massacre to his superiors. Eventually, word of what happened reached the head of the task force, Lieutenant Colonel Frank Barker. And Barker radioed Captain Medina and said, "Hey, knock it off. It's been enough of that." Medina in turn somewhat came out of his ghoulish haze, and he became frantic. Start telling us, we got to get the fuck out of here. When one GI radio that there were still three men alive, Medina replied with orders, "No, no, no, don't kill them. There's been too much of that today already." So they knew what they were doing. Weird. It's so fucking weird in a way. They just like, "Uh, like they just come out of this haze, yeah." They were in the trance, man. They were probably, I bet, they don't all remember it. Probably not. A lot of the guys, like, there was that one guy's like, "I don't even remember all the different ways that people were killed that day." Yeah, to a lot of guys, I bet they did kind of look at it as sort of a dream, sort of a haze. The shooting was over by 11 a.m., which is when Charlie Company broke for lunch. Thompson, meanwhile, filed an official report to Colonel Orrin Henderson. Colonel Henderson was the guy who had ordered the creation of Task Force Barker. That was the guy who had also created Operation Body Snatch. He was the guy who incentivized the killing of civilians to beef up body count reports to his superiors. As such, Colonel Henderson was already in the process of covering up the massacre by filing false reports based on what Charlie Company had initially radioed back to base early on in the mission. See, at about 8.40 a.m., after Charlie Company had been in Mealye for about an hour, they had reported back to base that they had killed 84 vietcong in Mealye. Now, Charlie Company knew this was not the truth, but as I said last episode, that was the story of Vietnam. In reality, Charlie Company had murdered over 500 civilians and left them to rot in the open air by the end of the day. And area VC was among those dead bodies. But because Colonel Henderson had received reports that Charlie Company had killed vietcong, he followed their lead and reported what Charlie Company told him, all while ignoring the reports of helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson. As far as Henderson was concerned, it's like, well, I got mad, Doug, I got Medina told me one thing, I got Thompson told me another thing. It is his choice as to like which one he's going to believe, which report he's going to give to his superiors. Medina's a captain. Yep. Yep. And just as it was with Callie's dissenting GI, Thompson's superiors were soon sending Thompson out on one dangerous mission after another. And this was after Thompson had made it clear that he wasn't going to let me lie go. Like they said, after Thompson came out of his meeting with Henderson that day, he was like damn near and Yosemite Sam mode, like he's throwing shit around. He's fucking yelling this goddamn army is, you know, it's a bunch of bullshit. And that's the thing. While Thompson had not been shot down once before me lie, his missions after me lie were so dangerous that Thompson was getting shot down over and over and over again. His chopper went down four times in quick succession. Fourth crash shattered his fucking spine. And it's not just Thompson. They're being sent out to get killed. It's his crew. It's the guys that are with him. Yeah. They got nothing to do with nothing. No, now Thompson barely survived Vietnam. But the army had certainly done everything they could to get Thompson killed before he could return to America because Thompson had every intention of telling everyone what he'd seen in the village of me lie. And he also had the intention to talk about how the army had done absolutely nothing about it. Now, I understand that me lie itself is a lot to take in. What? Marcus, I think that this is one of the, God, I've been having a blast. It ain't over yet. Charlie company was not the only unit in Task Force Barker to commit a massacre nor were they the only unit to commit a massacre in Task Force Barker that fucking morning. So while Charlie company were destroying me lie, Bravo company, another unit in Task Force Barker, they were bringing their own special brand of hell to a nearby hamlet called me K. Me K had only 100 residents as opposed to me lies 700. But while the massacre at me lie had a higher body count, the massacre at me K was far far more brutal and unfortunately more inventive. See, Bravo company had been sent to another nearby village on the morning of March 16, 1968, just in case the 48th battalion was over in this other village instead of in me lie. But Bravo had come across an area that was heavily mined and booby trapped. Within minutes of landing, Bravo company's lieutenant was killed and four other GI's were seriously injured by Vietcong traps. So Colonel Barker scrapped their mission and sent Bravo instead to the village of me K. Me K had the same escalation as me lie except in me K, Bravo company got more imaginative. In fact, one GI described me K as a shooting gallery and keep in mind, this is all happening at the same time that the massacre in me lie was happening and it's happening about a mile and a half away. So you could hear it. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. In me K, one soldier used his machine gun to literally tear a woman in two at the waist using just a stream of bullets. GI's found an infant at me K and they used the infant as a target in a marksmanship contest. The baby was only 10 feet away when the first GI took a shot with his 45 pistol, but when that GI missed, he got six feet closer. His second shot also missed which caused all the GI's who were sitting around watching this. They all roared with laughter. So the GI got right on top of the baby and fired the gun, point blank into its head, causing the skull to explode. Soldiers and Bravo company then threw dynamite in the houses and even had a contest to see which GI could blow up a house with the shortest fuse on his dynamite. By the end, Bravo had used 150 pounds of TNT to blow up 30 houses in the village of me K. The women in me K were also raped and any who resisted were hit with a rifle butt until she gave up before ultimately being murdered and all Bravo company murdered up to a hundred civilians, at least 90, almost completely wiped the village of me K off the map. And yet this part of the me Lime massacre, perhaps the cruelest part of all, is rarely mentioned when people talk about me Lai. There was no mad dog Medina or Lieutenant Cali and Bravo company to lead these ministry. This was just men being monsters as men often are in times of war and it shows without a doubt that the American military and its civilian commanders had created the conditions for these massacres to happen twice on the same fucking day, just a mile and a half away from each other. So we're asking if you know if anybody's asking was me Lai a singular event, we actually know for a fact that it's kind of crazy that even just on the day itself. And it was not a singular event. A mile and a half away. Yeah. Yeah. It was just the craziest event. It was the largest event. It was the one that they can maybe get some attention on too. You know, like the idea of that level, they can finally maybe somebody will pay attention. Yeah. It took a long time in the pictures. Yeah. You were saying the photographer being there helps a lot. Yeah. I'm surprised we even know about me K. Yeah. Well, they had a write that shit down. Somebody wrote it down. Someone wrote down pinning the baby to the wall and shooting in the head. A lot of this stuff came out through testimony later on. And some guys eventually just said it as the years went by like I have to talk about this. I have to get this off. I cannot die with this secret. I have to tell somebody. And Vietnamese survivors as well. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There were survivors at both Mi Lai and Mi K. But yeah, in the fair amount does come from Vietnamese survivors. And so after Bravo Company finished their massacre at the village of Mi K, they joined Charlie Company after their
massacre at me lie and the two come. Oh, and also, sorry, by the way, army investigators, in case someone out there is saying like, oh, well, you can't, the Vietnamese are the enemy, they're like, invest army investigators went to both locations and did forensics. - Oh yeah. - And there were many, many, many, many people who said even in 1968, like yeah, we killed a lot of babies in me lie in me K. - Yeah, they're villagers. - Yeah. - Even if they are the enemy, they're fucking villagers. - They're just villagers. They are civilians in the war. Who cares if they are V.C.? - Yes. - They're fucking villagers. They got nothing to do with this shit. - What I'm saying is that in case someone-- - I'm not yelling at you, I'm just mad. - Well, no, I know. In case someone's like, well, that was Vietnamese propaganda. You know, like, you can't go off of what the enemy says or what, you know, anything, like that's, I know what you mean. - Yeah. - But there was proof. - We're clearly the ones you can't trust. (laughing) - That was proof for all of us. And so after Bravo Company finished their massacre at the village of Mikae, they joined Charlie Company after their massacre at me lie. And the two companies walked the coast of a nearby river, burning or dynamiting every home they came across. They continued killing people. - Now it's just the devils out. - Yeah. - They're just jealous they can't afford waterfront property themselves. - They're like, I would never have a home. But people say that America didn't know about me lie for another year. But that's not strictly true. See on March 17th, the day after the massacre, the me lie mission was the subject of a glowing article in the New York Times. The article claimed that two companies of American GIs had caught the North Vietnamese troops in a pincer movement resulting in 128 dead Viet Cong soldiers. As far as anyone in America knew at the time, this was exactly what had happened on March 16th, 1968 in the village of me lie. So, we're at the way. - Oh, I don't want to go out of your dump. - Yeah. (laughing) (laughing) - The New York Times journalist was just celebrating, say Patrick's Day, a little early. - That's a lot of strides like I'm gonna get this article done so I could finish my Guinness. (laughing) - Oh yeah, but that is the me lie massacre. That's it. So let's now get into the cover-up. - Oh, fun. - Oh great. - Yeah. - Yeah, honestly, it's good to know because this is where, this is where, you know, the big sins of America really get stained in there. - Now the cover-up to the me lie massacre was simple and quick. As I said, the cover-up again, as the massacre was still happening when Charlie Company radioed back to base to report dozens of dead Viet Cong. But because the military were now on a ride that they could not exit. Well, of course that ride came to measuring victory by body count. The army couldn't reprimand the men in Charlie Company for what they'd done because then the entire fucking system for victory in Vietnam would fall apart. So as Charlie and Bravo companies hung out together in a literal graveyard as the sun went down on March 16th. They laughed and joked about how they were probably about to get a whole lot of praise for murdering all those women and children by the hundreds. And in this, they were absolutely correct. Captain Medina actually promoted Lieutenant Cali to first Lieutenant and Colonel Henderson and Barker publicly praised Charlie Company for defeating such a, quote, large force of Viet Cong soldiers in me lie. - And a lot of us, obviously, the beginning of the ass covering. By the standards and practices established by Task Force Barker, me lie had been an extremely successful mission. So the people above Barker did not ask questions when Barker delivered reports of great success in me lie. And so Charlie Company returned to routine search and destroy missions for the rest of the year. But something had changed in these formerly Gung Ho killers after they'd instigated and participated in a massacre. Word of me lie had already begun to spread on the day of the slaughter itself. And before long, Charlie Company was known in Vietnam as the guys who'd killed a lot of women and children but had reported 128 VC killed. It must be said that this was not something that the other Giaz in Vietnam were applauding. - Yeah, this is kind of a, it is, this is where it's kind of be fascinating. So kind of watch how that affects the other soldiers that hear about it because I'm certain there's a lot of guys that have killed a lot of VC and have seen a lot of action that were like, I can't, like how would you do that? - Yeah, why are you doing that? - And also when they go home, even if it's just for leave for a little while before they come back and they're called a fucking baby killer, it's these guys fucking fault. - Yeah. - They're getting the, they're getting the bill because of that. - Yeah. - And really like the Quang Nai province was, it was kind of special within Vietnam. Like it had been known since, you know, the days of like the Chinese occupation is like, people in Quang Nai hate invaders. They can't, do not deal with invaders. They do not, like they have a special saying of like the invaders cannot come in here. And so yeah, like they were always, you know, unfriendly towards American soldiers and so it was very tense. But across the rest of the country, most other soldiers were like, "Feeding these kids are great." Like how could you kill these fucking, like they're just people? - It's kind of like the best part what we do here is meet normal people. Like we were finally here because some of them, when they did have relationships with villagers, it was like all, you know, the slightest humanity that they could experience. - Yeah. - And if you only watch the Green Berets, John Wayne, fucked one on that beach. - Yeah. - I'm gonna marry that little boy. Come with me, me man. He'll be my new boy wife. - The task force Barker was disbanded in mid-April, which partly came as a result of reports from Robert Ramstill, who is, if you remember, the CIA officer in charge of Project Phoenix. (screaming) Thank you. - Really good. - See Ramstill reported a sharp drop in VC activity in Pinkville after the Meal I mission. (screaming) This met that Ram, (laughing) this met that Ramstill had essentially created a problem in Pinkville by reporting faulty intelligence that Meal I was hovering the 48th Battalion. Ramstill then decided that the problem he created had also been solved. And he decided that by using reports from task force Barker. And task force Barker was of course killing villagers and reporting them as dead VC. Again, this is fucking Vietnam in a nutshell. As it turned out, Barker and Medina were both subpar leaders to say the least. And other officers began to notice, especially after Meal I. One officer called Charlie Company, the most rag tag undisciplined hordes soldiers in all of Vietnam. - You mean that sounds like fun? It's like John Candy. - That's right, that's right. - They go two months without haircuts. - Yeah. - That's what they said about Charlie Company. - That's the worst thing they did. - Honestly, I'm really offended now I'm offended. - Yeah. - Well, two months without haircuts sounds a little silly considering what Charlie Company did. They really were an absolute fucking mess. They didn't shower, their discipline was lax. If not non-existent. And Charlie Company rarely provided cover for other units in Vietnam. They're fucking cowards. So everyone in the army were basically hoping that Charlie Company would just fade away. And their crimes would hopefully fade away with them. Neither wish, however, would come true. Now all the story of the Meal I Masker would take a while to reach American soil. It was exposed almost immediately within Vietnam itself. Survivors of the massacre made it to the nearest city a few days later. And a report was soon published in South Vietnam, mind you, that 480 civilians had been murdered in Meal I and another 90 had been killed in Meekay. I mean, that's the thing about Meekay. It was reported days later. It was not a secret. These numbers were actually on the low end. But even so, the American military could not have created a stronger propaganda piece for the North Vietnamese if they had actively tried to do so. - Yeah, they'd made like a million DC. - Yes. - Because this is in South Vietnam. - Yes. - It's not where the enemy lived. - No. - Yeah. - By Med April, reports of the massacre were distributed throughout Hanoi in North Vietnam and then to the rest of the world. But the US military, again and again, dismissed the reports as communist propaganda. The military just kept referring back to Colonel Henderson's report, which stated that 128 Viet Cong had been killed. To guess 20 civilians had died in the crossfire, but collateral damage that's what happened. The military did actually lightly investigate, but their investigation didn't really go beyond just looking at Henderson and Barker's reports one more time and saying, yep, looks good to me. - We have investigated ourselves and we have found ourselves to be entirely innocent. Congratulations, yourself. Congratulations, Meekay. You're right, thank you. Thank you, Meekay. Thank you, you. - Goddamn, I'm awesome. - Could you say haircut, though? - Yeah, it's one thing, I feel. And for that, I give you two numerates. (laughing) - And so by March of 1969, one year later, Meelai was in the rear view of the American military and the military were hoping and praying that it would be just another forgotten atrocity of war. The officers who'd been in charge have been given other assignments and most of the GIs who had participated had either gone back to America,
America haven't fulfilled their duty or they were running short on their service in Vietnam. But while nobody who had participated in the massacre in Mealai went to the press that year, mostly because many of them were well aware they had committed war crimes, a lot of them woke up every morning and wondered, is this the day when people are going to find out? The soldiers who had heard about the massacre while they were still in Vietnam, they were finding it difficult to stay quiet. Specifically, a GI named Ronald Ridenauer had heard about Mealai just a little over a month after the massacre happened from a guy that he had trained with who had been assigned to Charlie Company after Basic. This guy was named Charles Groover. And when Groover and Ridenauer were catching up one day in Vietnam, Groover asked Ridenauer if he'd heard about what Charlie Company had done in Pinkville. And Groover spelt the whole story saying that Charlie Company had gone into a village and killed everyone inside and Groover himself had seen a soldier shoot a little boy, point blank. That is the biggest fucking question when it comes to Mealai, who did what? When? Like, there was around 100 guys. They say that there were two who didn't participate and that means 98 participated? I don't know. You really don't know. It's so hard to prove who did what when. Also anyone who keeps their mouth shut just as guilty in my fucking eyes, very much so. Ronald Ridenauer was understandably haunted by the story he'd heard. But after a year of living with it, Ridenauer couldn't stand it anymore. In the spring of 1969, Ridenauer wrote letters to the Pentagon, the White House, and 24 congressmen pleading for someone to investigate what happened at Mealai. To the military's credit, someone in the Pentagon read Ridenauer's letter and came to the realization that there was a lot of shit happening on the ground in Vietnam that he wasn't privy to. See as I said, the guys on the ground in Vietnam were routinely lying and telling their superior officers what they wanted to hear and that bullshit kept traveling up the chain of command all the way to Washington. So there were a lot of military men at the Pentagon who had never been to Vietnam. They only knew it by reports and stats. Of course, any sort of anti-war, anything that you hear that is negative about the war, you can understand that anti-war is communist propaganda, it's bullshit. In fact, they thought Nixon was convinced that the anti-war protest, the anti-war movement, was entirely backed by communists. He thought there's no way that Americans could be against it like that. They were not by that. That's fascinating. Yeah, communist don't pay anyone, especially protesters. Yeah. Yeah, if you want to get a communist to stop talking, just say, I know and I agree and they just turn off, they just stop. These guys in the Pentagon had no idea about the realities behind all those body count numbers. So when Rittenhauer's letter landed on the right desks, men in the military and men in Congress, sure shit started asking questions about me lie. Now, by the summer of 1969, a colonel in the Pentagon started tracking down members of Charlie Company who had rotated back to America based on their statements. This colonel actually had Lieutenant William Calle shipped from Vietnam back to America just for questioning. Immediately. They took this seriously. Is this just a question? Yeah. Just like, well, you know, that is vaguely serious, I guess. It's very. No, if you're bringing brought back to America for questioning, you're fucked. At the same time, journalists seem more harsh, had begun his own investigation into the me lie massacre and once Hersch sunk his teeth into the story, there was no way that me lie was going to stay hidden short of the C.I. killing Hersch and calling it a suicide. They don't do that. Yeah, Mark, because they don't do anything like that. They've never done that. No, never ever. A heart attack is impossible to fake. Well, let's just say they're. I will say they're not great at it, but yeah. By the time the me lie story first hit the presses in September of 1969, Lieutenant Calle had already been charged with the murder of 109 civilians. And by November, army investigators, as I mentioned, had returned to me lie. There, they found three mass graves containing the bodies of up to 500 people. And those bodies did indeed belong to mostly old men, women, and children. And by the way, it wasn't the Americans who would put all the bodies into the mass graves after the Americans left. The remaining villagers came and cleaned up the bodies the best they could. But on the same time, Seymour Hersch published his exposé on the massacre, Me Lie 4, and it caused outrage the world over. If you want to be real upset, give that a read. Yeah. And with that, the army's hand was forced. They had to find out not only why this massacre happened, but why nobody knew about it until well over a year later. So the army chose a lieutenant general named William Pears to head what came to be known as the Pears panel. Like Hugh Thompson, General Pears was a decent man by all accounts. And under his guidance, the panel compiled enough evidence to file charges against 15 men for both the murders and the subsequent cover-ups. So it was a trial of their peers. That's what I could do. I wish she could have been there with me. Oh, what I would have given. I'm sure someone said it. Anybody? Anybody? All right. Well, I'll just go back to the CIA. As far as what President Lyndon Baines Johnson thought about all this, Baines, of course. He was actually well out of the White House by the time the Me Lie story broke. While LBJ was president when Me Lie occurred, he had declined to run for a second term, because Vietnam had completely and utterly defeated him. And honestly, LBJ had made the right call. He was his decisions and the decisions made by his cabinet that had made this war so fucking brutal. Coincidentally, though, LBJ had announced his decision not to run again just two weeks after the Me Lie massacre, although LBJ did not have any knowledge of Me Lie at all. But since Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in April of 1968, three days after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, 1968 was a wild fucking year in American history. It's crazy week. The Democrats did not have a strong candidate to run in LBJ's place. That paved the way for who else, but President Richard Nixon, who'd been waiting in the wings for another chance at the office ever since he'd lost the California governor's race in 1962. He had said you didn't have old Richard Nixon to kick around anymore. And yet he did actually decide he was a lawyer for a little while. But man when the opportunity came back up, he could not resist politics, could not resist getting back in. Nixon fucked up in Vietnam like every president before. But Nixon was special because he had fucked things up in Vietnam before he was even elected. See, Nixon actually sabotaged peace talks between North and South Vietnam in late October, 1968, just before that year's presidential election. There had been a path towards peace in 1968, but Nixon had back channeled to the South Vietnamese government just days before his election against Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Nixon told the South Vietnamese that they would get a better deal if they held off on peace talks until after Nixon was elected president. So peace talks between North and South Vietnam fell apart just before the election, which was of course bad for Hubert Humphrey. Richard Nixon was therefore elected president by committing literal treason against the United States. And that's not my opinion. LBJ is recorded saying that son of a bitch Nixon committed treason. LBJ knew about the back channel because the CIA had bugged the South Vietnamese government without the South Vietnamese knowing. And everybody's just the fucking everybody sucks. But LBJ couldn't call Nixon out on his treasonous acts in public without revealing that the CIA committed to espionage against one of our allies. So LBJ let Nixon go and Nixon continued escalating the war just like every president before him, all while constantly talking about finding a path towards a so called honorable peace. Well, if LBJ was about to fucking get out, why didn't he rat everyone out anyway? Well, it wasn't about him. It was about America. And it was about the CIA. You know, it was about America's image because, you know, it's, yeah, it was
only in recent years that the rest of the country, or the rest of the world, realized, funny, Freudian slip, the rest of the world realized that America does spy on its allies and we've been doing it for a very, very long time. - Because we told everybody we didn't. - Yeah, we told everybody we didn't. And having a bug and the presidential office of an allied government is a massive no-no. - I call it a no-no. - Yeah, big no-no, yeah. So yeah, so LBJ did what he thought, again, what he thought was best for America and in reality, it would have been best if he would have ripped the fucking bandaid off and said like, oh no, Nixon is a fuck, he's treasonous, he's committed treason. - Honest he's the best policy. - It is. - Do we think if Hubert went by Hu, he would have had a better chance? - Hu, no, Hu Humphrey sounds worse than Hubert Humphrey. - Yeah, you're right. - Hu Humphrey, is that not the character from Lolita? - Like literally, I don't remember. - After Seymour Hirsch broke the Milaie story and leading national magazines and newspapers covered it further, some Americans were starting to realize that there was nothing honorable about the war in Vietnam. Other Americans, however, decided that they just weren't gonna believe that Milaie happened. This unfortunately isn't anything new in America. The internet may have made this worse, but as we're about to see, America has been comfortable with cognitive dissonance for a very long time. Even though they were fucking pictures of the bodies and testimony from the GI's who had actually done this, all this was being published all over the country. The initial and formal polls revealed that most Americans refused to believe the allegations as to what happened to Milaie. In fact, the first paper to publish photojournalist Ronald Haverley's photos got calls criticizing them for printing documentation about what happened in Milaie. Just as it had been with people in Ronald Haverley's hometown, readers of this paper, I think it was the Cleveland plain dealer, they were alleging that the photographs had been faked. - Yeah, I saw it interview with Haverley, and he said that he is never let go of the guilt of not saying something sooner. - Yeah. - Oh yeah, I bet. And he was holding his whole life. Yeah, he considers himself one of the bad guys. - Yeah, I know. And it's fucking awful. It's it's, I tried to say horrible, but then I said awful, robots. - Awful. - The further polls about Milaie were even more disturbing. A Time Magazine poll showed that the American public considered Milaie to be by a margin of 65 to 22% an unfortunate but unavoidable side effect of war. A similar margin also rejected the idea that Milaie proved that the Vietnam War had been a mistake. But again, to be fair, to this incredibly complicated time in American history, almost 50,000 Americans had already died in Vietnam by December of 1969. A lot of families had either lost sons or at an even larger number, a much much much larger number were dealing with kids who were coming back with lost limbs and/or shattered psyches. For many Americans, it was unthinkable to consider that their sons had not only died for nothing, but it died for something that was morally wrong from the very beginning. So while many people saw Milaie as tragic proof of America's overall mistake concerning the war, Milaie also became an extension of America's shared sunk cost in Vietnam. That inability to face reality was unfortunately being shared by more and more Americans every day in 1969. The more kids came home in boxes, the more people did not want to believe that something like Milaie could happen. - Because then it's all for nothing. - Yeah, it's all for nothing, and you know, and just think about this, you know, like there's. Everyone knows somebody who knows somebody who was in 9/11, or died in 9/11. And that was, you know, 3,000 people dead. This is 50,000, you know, and that's 50,000 killed, and it's not even counting the hundreds of thousands who came back wounded. - How about this? - Milaie is one sixth the size of 9/11. - Yeah. - Wow. - Jesus. - Yeah, so it's a Milaie's. Yeah, so 9/11, six Milaie's. - Yes. - That's great math. (laughing) - What's going on? - Is this common cool? - I like doing math by Milaie's. - Yeah, me, you're the same from now on. - Round on, that's all I'm doing. In memory of them. (laughing) - Now, the trials to convict the perpetrators of the Milaie massacre, it's the same as everything else in the story, it was fucking complicated. By the time the trials began, 25 GI's and officers were charged with something related to the massacre, and each of those cases had to be tried and proved individually and fairly. These trials had all the same standards as a regular court trial. So while a GI could certainly testify that they saw a fellow soldier shoot and kill villagers, it still had to be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the charged GI had actually pulled the trigger. - Yeah, and that's very difficult. - And then there was the matter of the charges surrounding cover-up. This was even harder to prove because who's to say, who knew what, and when they knew it? And this is all during the so-called fog of war, and it's even harder when you consider all of the lying that it already happened in Vietnam. And so as army lawyers began working on what they could prove, cases started falling apart. And by the time they actually got to who was gonna be face in a court martial from Eli, the number had gone from 25 military men to just six. Now only one officer faced charges for the cover-up. That was Colonel Orrin Henderson, the man who'd ordered the creation of Task Force Barker. See Hugh Thompson had told Henderson what had happened at Eli directly, and Thompson had done it on the very day of the massacre, but Henderson was a man without a single fucking shred of honor. He just blied. He said, nah, Thompson didn't tell me nothing. I heard the fucking testimony myself. You know, he just said, nope, he didn't tell me. Uh-uh, of course. So Henderson's court martial became a case he said she said. And Henderson, who had incentivized the killing of civilians, ended up walking as a result. He just purged himself and walked. - Well, didn't Thompson write it down that he'd like told him? It's still, he said she, there's no, you know, just writing a report down, don't make it true. You know, it doesn't mean that that's what actually happened because he has, on one hand, he has Medina's report. Henderson does in the other hand. He has Thompson's. And so which ones, he's like, which one am I supposed to prove? How am I supposed to know? - Medina's is covered in blood. - Yes. - Well, speaking of Captain Mad Dog Medina, he also dodged any sort of punishment. He went to trial. And this is, you know, many GIs saw him kill civilians. Thompson saw him kill civilians. It was argued that Mad Dog had created the conditions for the massacre. He knew that civilians were being killed and he had failed to stop it. Medina faced 175 counts of murder. But a jury also sent Medina away as a free man because the prosecution could not meet the burden of proof. - Didn't have the courage to put down all the other. - Yeah. - The others who were charged from Eli were GIs like Sergeant Charles Hudo, who became the poster boy for the just following orders defense. A psychologist painted Hudo, I think it's Hudo. - It don't matter. - Yeah, it don't matter. A psychologist painted Hudo as a, he was a country bumpkin. He's a rube. They said that his rural upbringing and his lack of basic education, he's a rumpkin. - He's a rumpkin, poop butt. - Yeah, his rural upbringing and lack of basic education made it impossible for Hudo to determine the legality of an order. - Now, we don't know if Hudo was one of McNamara's morons, we tried looking, couldn't find any evidence of it, but going off of the defense's argument, I'd say it was a safe bet. - He wasn't one of-- - He wasn't one of McNamara's maestro. (laughing) - It was argued that Hudo did not have the ordinary sense and understanding to exercise the right a soldier has to deny an illegal order. An illegal order, like say, go into a village and kill a bunch of women and children. - And the army's supposed to say no to something like that. The defense claim that Hudo followed orders blindly because he was basically a fucking idiot from the sticks and his jury agreed. Hudo also went free. - I also agree, but it doesn't mean that he should go free. - Sure. - Yeah. - Yeah. - You know, it's just like one of those things. People charge him a manslaughter. - How about that? - Just wait till we get to Cali. So G.I. after G.I. was acquitted, and in the end, someone had to go down for me lie. And it seems like everyone was most comfortable settling on the one guy that fucking nobody liked. Lieutenant William Cali, Jr. Cali's trial was one of the longest in military history. And during the five months he was in the hot seat. He became a sort of cult-like folk hero for the shitheads of America. For people of our generation, the closest comparison I can make is the Trayvon Martin Murder Trial of 2013. - Yeah, he's a prodo, George Zimmerman. - He is. If you're old enough to remember that trial, then you probably remember how a lot of shitty people either lionized or made excuses for defendant George Zimmerman. Jim Zimmerman, of course, shot and killed an unarmed teenager named Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2013 because George was scaled. He was super-scaled at this kid. - He was scared. - He was scared. It was about the hoodie, because about hoodie, hoodie means when you see somebody in your hoodie, you're like, "Oh, there's a criminal." "Oh, there's a criminal." - It's not a perfect one to one, but the support the people gave to Luke Kent. - Also, by the way, George Zimmerman is almost now. - Oh, yeah. - Fucking wonderful. - Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. - Really good. - He sold the gun that he killed Trayvon with made a bunch of money off it, and beat his girlfriend. - But then he spent it all, they let him out. - And they spent it all. - Now, it's not a perfect one to one here, but the support the people gave to Lieutenant Cali in 1968, who Lieutenant Cali murdered an entire village because you're not.
was also a wee wee scale would, it was similar to the support people gave to George Zimmerman in 2013. Mostly the thing that links these two cases is racism. Both Zimmerman and Callie saw their victims as things to be feared, things that were less than human. And their supporters believed that the actions of those murderers were justified because those supporters share those same cowardly racist opinions. It's insane how much everyone could be so passionate about right and wrong. But it just goes away once killing children's involved. Now now shades agree. Now one of the most bizarre features of The Meal I Story is the music that was released around the time of Callie's trial. But it may not be the type of credence clearwater revival fortunate son protest music you'd expect. Lieutenant Callie and The Meal I Massacre overall created a kind of mini genre of music during the Vietnam era. I think 91 songs is enough to call it a mini genre. 91 songs specifically referenced Meal I. Most of them were specifically about Meal I. And these weren't album filler tracks either. These were fucking singles. And out of the 91 songs released about Meal I, the songs written in support of William Callie outnumbered the anti-Callie songs 2 to 1. Now these songs do acknowledge that The Massacre occurred, but they all find a way to justify it claiming that Callie had actually been under attack or he had just been confused that day. Either thing is not an answer. No. Those are of course your standard Pete Seager folk songs to Crying Meal I, you know, the last train in Nuremberg. I know you enjoy. I like that. I enjoy that. Yeah, yeah. But the most interesting Meal I songs are the ones that are pro-Callie, but against the war. Now I say interesting, not correct, because from those artist point of view, Callie himself was just another victim of Vietnam. Pro-Callie anti-war songs like Hang on, Bill, by the country artist Rick Riddle, they take the position that Callie was just following orders and that the real criminals were the men who gave those orders and sent these boys to war in the first place. But they did the orders. But they did the order. But the order, yeah, I know. I know. Yes. I know. But also, you know, go get them. Yeah, go get those guys then. Yeah. Well, other songs like "Set Lieutenant Callie Free" by Big Bill Johnson, who- Count on the nose. Yeah, he was also Big Bill Johnson also known as the singing drywall man. And he's the guy that looked it. I might need spiritual guidance. I love anybody who's nickname involves drywall. I mean, say what you want about him, but I bet he could really fucking hang some drywalls. Oh, I bet. I bet he can't see any seam, right? No seam, huh? Right there, huh? I still hate you, but he's like, "God, great job." You get it now. You get not out of power in my Spain. He loved the name, the singing drywall man so much. I got that from his fucking obituary. Yeah. And the singing drywall man will now go down as the dying drywall man. Well, they make his casket at him. She rocked. Yeah. Well, "Set Lieutenant Callie Free" by Big Bill Johnson portrays Callie as a Jesus-like figure. He crucified, they said. Callie was punished for all the sins of the war. And honestly, I mean, it ain't a bad song if you like this era of country music. Yeah. But I will say that it is a bizarre feature of American culture that a fucking massacre would have dozens upon dozens of songs attached to it. Let's hear some Big Bill for a second just to give you a taste because this shit is it's surreal to listen to. Well, it's just the lyrics are, it's fascinating because you know, he's saying we're a sick society if we don't set Lieutenant Callie free. But then the next thing he says is we're tired of a war that can't be won. Yeah. It's pro-Callie anti-war. It's more like trying to explain that Callie's, it's almost like what you were saying that Callie's just another kind of symptom of the problem in a way, but he's so in that way he's kind of innocent. Yeah, but the thing is about is that it also completely discounts the lives of the Vietnamese people that he killed. It's like they're not worth it. Oh yeah, it's not worth it. They're just Vietnamese people. Who care? Why should we ruin this? It's that whole thing. Like, do you really want to ruin this young man's life? It's like, yeah, I do fucking the Murdox. Yeah, you're a Brock Turner. Yeah, fucking. I do. Yeah, I like the Vmilae incident by the Shaw. I said to you, it's a rege song. It's a bit too happy. It's honestly been helping me process all this. I mean, there's a lot of really good rege songs about Vietnam, including Vietnam by Jimmy Cliff. It's a phenomenal song. Incredible. It's so weird. It's so relaxing. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's the other side of it because you know, all of the pro-cali songs are, of course, all country songs written by white artists, but the black artist, there was a soul artist named James Armstrong. He wrote a song from a civil rights perspective very simply and truthfully that song was called Thank God Cali wasn't black. It's pretty good. I listen to it. It's pretty good. It's pretty, you know, it's just regular soul. Oh, yeah, the old Betty White. But the most popular pro-cali song and the most popular Melae song overall was the Battle Him of Lieutenant Cali by a real piece of shit named Terry Nelson. This song was featured on Nelson's album Wake Up America. I'm sleeping. And then Wake Up America was no shit released on a label called Plantation Records. Yes. And don't worry. There's definitely a Confederate flag on the cover now. Oh, you have, oh, you better believe it. That's I know to buy. No, I didn't get no reason why otherwise I go, I've got to see the ribble flag. Yes. You're ribble flag bokeh. Nelson's song certainly isn't good enough to play. You know, you heard one Battle Him, you heard them all. Oh, yeah. But the just little Eric's is. Nelson believed that Cali was being unfairly tried because the civilians killed at Melae were ultimately collateral damage. And Cali was only doing what he had been told to do by his commanding officers. America, therefore, had no right to punish Cali or any other soldier for anything they ever did. Just so long as their actions fell under the just following orders umbrella. In other words Nelson would have made a fantastic fucking Nazi. Famous. Nelson's song, however, sold over a million copies and peaked at number 37 on the billboard charts. For a battle him. Come on. That, but that tells you a lot. We got too many crackers and this fucking country. Yeah, dude. Who's it? There's a couple of big songs that were kind of like that. There were a lot of big Vietnam, but country songs. Yeah. But to show you just how divided America was at this time, the Battle Him of Lieutenant Cali shared the charts that month with one of the greatest protest songs ever written is the same month. What's going on by Marvin Gaye came out. Marvin thankfully charted much higher than fucking Nelson. It's one of those interesting things where talent still always kind of wins. Most of the time. Yeah, I mean, we're like most people like their hate, hate drove them to do the Lieutenant Cali song, but then they hear what's going on. They're like, damn it. It's just fucking nice. It's really good. That bass line. The bass line is revolutionary. Yeah. Incredible. It's breaking all these barriers. Color barriers started me. Hey, I didn't have my color barriers. Now Nelson, your song's great, but it's hard to fuck to. I'm gonna say I ain't the first time I heard that. So I'm just gonna remind you go to the beat. Oh shit. I'm off. Yeah. Oh, make sure a wife likes a regular thrust. Yeah. Like you're a broken machine. You want to be like a broken hoen machine. Oh, just like Lieutenant Cali fired too early. Me and when the first one of my fans to do that, despite all the songs and support of Lieutenant Cali, his crimes were in fact very real. Well, it could not be proved that Captain Medina or Colonel Henderson specifically ordered the killing of civilians, nor could it be proved that they had intentionally concealed the murders afterwards. Prosecutors could prove Cali's crimes. They were able to prove that Cali had personally participated in, ordered and or caused the killing of unresisting civilians who were under U.S. control. Dig them all up and hang them. Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. I mean interrupt the body pit. For example, pretty clear example of what happened as a result of Cali's orders that day. So on March 16, 1971, coincidentally, the third anniversary of the massacre, the case went to the judge.
After 79 hours of deliberation, the court came back with a guilty verdict, finding Cali responsible for the murder of just 22 Vietnamese civilians, because 22 was all they could prove. He was sentenced to life in prison, doing hard labor at 411 worth. But Cali's conviction was an extremely unpopular decision. The White House received 5,000 telegrams after the verdict, and those telegrams were in support of Cali by a margin of a hundred to one. Well, who's going to write in good job, good job, lock it up. I just want to take a little moment to say, thank you, so I wanted to personally thank you for doing this. And here is a $5 McDonald's gift certificate. This is why you got to leave positive Google reviews. Seriously, guys. Just understand, you only get the negative emails, they don't get positive emails. This is the story of what I deal with on a daily basis, because how do I know what proper criticism or not, when you guys only send an email when you're angry? After getting these telegrams, President Nixon in a recorded conversation with Henry Kissinger about Lieutenant Cali said, "Most people don't give a shit whether he killed them or not." Direct quote. And in this, Nixon was absolutely right. After the trial, 79% of Americans actually believed that Cali should never have been convicted at all, much less sentenced to life and prison. Also, it would like to take a moment here since he came up to have a moment of silence because this just came down on my news desk, Nancy Kissinger died today. Just now, Nancy Kissinger died 92 years young. Yes. Yes. Seaman poisoning. They both lived so well. Yeah. And evil is strong. Evil is really strong. Yeah. He died last year or this year. A couple of years ago. Yeah. Maybe a couple of years ago. You might have had COVID. I don't know. I don't remember. Whatever got him, I'm glad. I give that thing money. Mm-hmm. I don't care if it's bowel cancer. I support it. That may not come as a surprise to hear that Lieutenant Cali did not end up serving life and prison. Three days after the conviction, President Nixon himself ordered Cali removed from jail and placed under house arrest. In August, Cali's sentence was reduced from life to 20 years. And upon appeal in 1974, Cali was released on bail before getting his sentence reduced again to 10 years. But since Cali had already served three years by this point, he was therefore up for parole. Parole was granted in short order and Lieutenant Cali was set free in September of 1975. He stayed out of the public eye for the rest of his life. Guess where Cali moved to? Just guess. I mean, I know. It's Florida. Yeah. Yeah. Look, every hated American goes to be forgotten is Florida. It's not so much I want to be forgotten. I just want to be celebrated for being a bad person. So I'm going to go to Florida where they like Cali was so forgotten that when he died in Florida in 2024, his death went unnoticed for three entire months. This is a major figure in American history. Yeah. 91 songs written about him. Yeah. I've forgotten about him three months. He was dead before someone finally noticed just like screaming mad George. Wow. Yeah. I try to watch the guy for last night in his name. He had a terrible film, um, terrible, terrible movie, sure, but his band, the mad is fucking incredible. Yeah, he was in the, you know, he was in the New York punk scene in the early 80s with the Beastie boys before he went in and did all the fucking amazing makeup shit. Really? Yeah, he started. The makeup shit on stage at like CBGB. That's awesome. Yeah. No, the mad is fucking, uh, they're one of my favorite hardcore bands ever. Man, a lot of talents of people are fucking dead, man. That's true. That's true. But he has a wonderful legacy of turning a woman into a cockroach. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Now, by the time Lieutenant Cali was released from prison, most Americans simply didn't care. People were actively trying to forget about anything having to do a Vietnam because by September in 1975, the Vietnam War was done and dusted. Nixon had pulled out American ground troops altogether in 1973 after years of extremely low morale amongst American ground troops. And that low morale had been partly due to me lie. See, despite Cali supporters, 58% of Americans held the opinion after Cali's trial that the war in Vietnam was morally wrong. And these Americans favored complete withdrawal by 1971, GIs in Vietnam were refusing to participate in combat because it had become common knowledge that the war was lost. Fraggings, that's soldiers, murdering, commanding officers, usually forgiving orders that might get GIs killed, uh, Fraggings greatly rose in 1971. And as future failed, presidential candidate, John Kerry put in his speech to the Senate in 1971, speaking as a Vietnam veteran. No, no, no, no, no, I've got to fucking carry that will kill you. Please do. How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? That's amazing. That's amazing. Thank you. Thank you. You're so good. I almost fucking hit you. Wow. Hey, John Kerry. Yeah. We all do. We all do. We all do. Do you help kill a bunch of people? Oh, yeah. As far as South Vietnam was concerned, we had left that country in absolute fucking ruins. We'd not only killed or helped kill a lot of Vietnamese, we'd also left behind rampant unemployment and runaway inflation. The South Vietnamese were worse off than when we'd arrived in nearly every single way. Then when Nixon resigned as president in 1974 as a result of the Watergate scandal, Sanders and Hanoi saw the opportunity to go big because Nixon was known to still do a few bombings here and there, even after we pulled out ground troops. I just for fun. Just kidding. Just kidding. The North Vietnamese launched an actual invasion into South Vietnam in December of 1974. And even though president Gerald Ford tried to be the sixth U.S. president to throw good money after bad in a Vietnam, Congress finally said, fuck you. And by April of 1975, Saigon finally fell by Saigon. It's now. See you next time. We're on vacation. Yeah. Next time we're in vacation in Ho Chi Minh city. Yeah. That's what it's called now. That would have been the only thing that he did. Boo. Gerald Ford. Yeah. Oh, he fell down. Yeah. He fell down and then he has that thing. He drank beer. He drank beer. Yeah. And a big head. Uh-huh. And then he was, we went to, what was his library? Where is this? It was in Grand Rapids. Yeah. You can see it out of our window. Yeah. It looks like a used car law. You know, it's nice. It's a back room. It's truly. And you know, it was really nice about his national libraries. It's a really good place to be inside a building. Yeah. Yeah. Like if you need to be inside a building, that's a building. That's right there. It's right there. You walk inside that. No elements. He's responsible for one of my favorite day in a carvy bits. I'm out for a dead day. Just for a dead day. Just for a dead day in a car. For a part by a wall. Just for a part by a wall. No. History has shown that the domino theory could not have been more wrong. Other Southeast Asian countries actually became more anti-communist after Saigon fell. And Vietnam actually ended up fighting yet another war against fucking China. Before the 70s, we're even over. Do you remember China had once given North Vietnam weapons to fight us? And according to an email we got, the Vietnamese as a whole have a far lower opinion of the Chinese than they do the Americans. It is interesting. Bulls because they were there for way longer and did way horrific shit for very, very long. Very long time. But concerning the whole reason why we fought this thing, the Cold War, it's actually possible that had we just let the Soviet Union do its thing and trying to take over or support other countries in the pursuit of spreading international communism. Soviet Union might have fallen even faster. See after Vietnam, bloody to America's nose so badly, the Soviet Union decided to support communism in Afghanistan, which soon turned into the Soviet Union's Vietnam War. Rambo 3. Yep. America. Wow, that is Rambo 3. That's history. Yeah. So you can learn history from sliced loam. Yeah. He sliced loam. Loves the Taliban. Yeah, well, America, of course, stayed as an advisor and weapons supplier during that conflict by back in an up and coming Afghani warlord named Osama Bin Laden. I wonder what he's up to now. Blu, blu, blu, blu, blu, blu, blu, blu, blu, blu, he's kissing Ariel a little mermaid. And that just goes to show you that fucking everything is connected, everything. But in the end, the Soviet Union's 10 year war in Afghanistan was the final nail in their coffin and the threat of international communism, therefore died in 1991, no matter how much certain people in this fucking country seem to want to believe that the threat of international communism is still real. It's not. We're doing it again. We're talking about it again. Nope. I will 100% concede that we definitely got a few things wrong throughout this series. We're not in.
historians were just podcasters. We like to talk about the things that we find interesting. And the weekly release schedule that we locked ourselves in two years ago requires flying by the seat of our pants. Just a little bit. - We do our best, but sometimes we do talk off the cuff. And I do, and I do also believe that yeah, sometimes we make mistakes, but also I'll say sometimes with historical episodes, it's up to interpretation. And then certain books have certain perspectives and certain historians have certain perspectives. So we do our best to choose what we'll find as entertaining here as much as we can, and what makes sense to us and what works, but yeah, we're not historians. - Yeah, what makes sense to us? And that's a big part of it. - Yeah, before this episode, I thought Charlie Company was just hanging out with my nephew. (laughing) (laughing) - He's just a clever guy. We have to continue the show, okay? We're so close. We're so close to the end of the episode. - Oh yes. - But mistakes aside, I do believe that we at the very least showed in this series that Vietnam is full of incredibly important lessons. And if we learn those lessons, America could be a far better leader in the world and a far better country in which to live. We learned, for example, that America can be arrogant, self-centered, and entirely unable to admit that we've made a mistake even when it is incredibly obvious that we have made massive errors in judgment. That being said, those flaws are also partly why many Americans don't learn the lessons of Vietnam. See, it's hard, if not impossible, to say that we could have won that war. And there are even fewer people who can make a good argument that we should have ever even gone to Vietnam in the first place. There certainly aren't any same people who say that we fought this war in a way that could be considered ethical or even halfway decent. So, to talk about Vietnam is to talk about America making a mistake. And if America made a mistake in Vietnam, then it calls in a question a lot of shit America has done. And let me tell you, this country has made a lot of fucking mistakes over the years. So, people who don't want to learn the lessons, they don't talk about Vietnam. But in the end, that is the crux of Vietnam. And it was the crux of the conflict between the people who supported the war back in the '60s and those who were against it. See, on the pro-war side, you had a lot of patriots who were saying that we had to defend America's actions no matter what. If America did it, then it had to be the correct decision. On the anti-war side, you had a lot of patriots who loved America, but knew that we could do better. People fuck up. That's the nature of people. But one of the things that makes a good leader is what you do after you realize you have fucked up. The Vietnam War persisted for so long because so many people could not even admit that they had fucked up in the first place. And unless you admit to fucking up, you can't do anything to fix those mistakes. And I do think it's our jobs as vaguely enlightened new generations of specially guys to be able to make mistakes and then say this was a mistake. To have a fucked up. And then be able to come back and say, hey, I wish I could take this back. I wish I could do more. I wish I could do better. Because we've talked about how many times on just other stories about how redemption has to be possible. But you have to choose redemption. And you've got to find redemption. And it's difficult. So yes, we all talk off. We all just do whatever we do. And it's just, but it's important. This is, it's important to be able to acknowledge mistakes and then also move forward. I love America. I'm always going to love America. I think I'm very fortunate to be living here and growing up here. And I think also that has to come with knowing that we have done some of the worst shit this world has ever seen and accepting that and figuring out how to move forward from that. Exactly. And police, if we want us believe that we're held to a higher standard, then we have to hold ourselves to a higher stage. Exactly. If you're going to pretend to be better than everyone else, then fucking be better than everyone else. Then you have to be better than everybody else. Yes. Now today, we're in a fairly similar situation with a fairly similar split and opinion about what we're going to do about America. A lot of Americans have fucked up in recent years by voting a bunch of psychopaths and criminals into office. But at this point, 10 years down the line, it is what it is. Like I said, people fuck up. It's what we do. But maybe we can apply a lesson from Vietnam to 2026. See, America could have saved itself a lot of pain, anguish, and treasure. If we just admitted that Vietnam was a mistake, years before we finally pulled our last people out of there in 1975. And the last American to die in Vietnam indeed died during the fall of Saigon. But we knew with absolute certainty by 1967 that we had fucked up by sending troops into Vietnam. But we kept sending more troops to die and more troops to kill because we could not admit our mistake. Had we admitted our mistake in 1967, me lie would have never happened. And to that point, I'm sure there are people listening right now who know that America fucked up in the 2016 election. And fucked up even worse in 2024. You may even be one of those people who fucked up. You fucked up. You fucked up. You fucked up. You felt the effects of those elections, no matter how much you try to ignore it. Just like Robert McNamara and LBJ tried to ignore the mistakes they made. But if you're having a hard time admitting to this mistake, just remember that it is far better to admit you fucked up and act accordingly than it is to continue marching towards a future that has the potential to tear this country even further apart than it was torn during Vietnam. More people will get hurt. More people will be falsely imprisoned. And more people will die. But I'd like to think that if Americans took the time to truly search their souls about what they've supported over the last decade, they will find that stubborn pride is a poor substitute for basic human decency. If America had learned that lesson way back in the 1960s, it could have handed its children a far better world than the one we have now. Instead, over 50 years later, we live in a world in which we are still dealing with the consequences of the Vietnam War. And that will likely continue for a very long time. Fuck yeah. Yes, be it fucking nom, man. I gotta get the fuck out of here, man. Oh yeah, man. Get out now. Yeah, dude, I just want to say it's nice to catch last chopper out of Saigon, and I'll see your fuckers over in Palaforn, IA, where I will be starting a new thing called ketamine. I'll make it up and sell it out, I hope. And I'm certain it's going to treat the 70s and 80s great. Yeah. Also, I will say it because we did good great work, Mark. Thank you. And I will say everything that it's like-- because we get a little tiny things wrong as we go. But this was like, you put so much work into these scripts. Thank you. It's a lot of work, a lot of thought. Many years of thought. Thanks to Joel and Rachel, our research team for the great work they did on it. Also, thanks to Carolina for helping me out on a couple of these episodes and reading them and saying like, that doesn't make any sense. And we will put out the list of sources too. We'll put out the list of-- we'll also put out the list of sources. And I also want to say that if you really dig this era of history and you want to see what people were doing in America during all this time, the new season of No Dogs and Space premieres on September 10th with a five-part series on the New York Dolls. Nice. Isn't this going to be great? It's punk 2.0. Yeah. We're covering a hell of a lot of-- and we're coming back. We've got the episodes recorded. We are-- we're going to-- Video. And video. Yeah, we're all-- and we've also got-- we've been filming just like we've been doing with the last podcast. We're going to be doing, putting them on YouTube with a lot of visuals, like we've got a bunch of really great shit coming up, but cannot wait to show people what we've been working on for so long. Oh, yeah, that makes me not want to frag you. Thank you. Yeah, we're going to get it right now. Oh, a good name for that. And no dogs. Fragile rock. [LAUGHTER] Go to patreon.com. Plus, last but not least, if you can listen to the show and free, you can also get to see last stream of the left live every 5 p.m. PSD every Tuesday, also except for the next two. Yeah. But then you're going to go and see us on Netflix. Right now. Go for it. L.P. on the left for all your social fucking media needs. You don't have any. Go to YouTube, it's for you. So I'll do all of our stuff. We've got new episodes of VTM coming out. Bloodbath 77 is coming out. They are coming out, even though we are on break. And then some plays underneath has got new stuff coming out. L.P.N. Romanticie, Foreign Report, L.P.N. TV is going strong. Go check it all out. Also, Henry was just on brighter side, talking about the brighter sides of Vietnam, and it got a little unhinged. Yeah, I really want to check that out. I'm pretty happy, too. But it was a lot of fun. It was surprisingly fun. Navejus, the whole time it's just me raining in Henry and Amber. Well, you guys are powerful together. Yeah, wow. I will say, do you know what? I've never put them on the same show ever. Like, you know, they were never on a chuckle hut together. Dude, I've been recent number one. I've been recent number one. Most of the time was me dialing back. Amber's, you would ever brand 'em fucking wicked fruit she got on the Vietnam. Yeah, didn't know. Stuff that Amber, quote, unquote, learned about Vietnam, is worse than anything you wrote today. Do not put anything. Do not put these two on my room together on microphones. I knew that. I knew that. I was the combo. I mean, I was the combo. I was the logical one. I didn't say the story about shooting the rocket launcher through the nurses' phone. I say it, L.P.S. Boyle.
all are going listen to it. We're also on YouTube. It's on the brighter side LPN on YouTube. I'm hitting the road September 11th and 12th. I'm in DC finally Henry and I in September. We got some shows now. We're going to be in Norfolk, Virginia and in Raleigh, North Carolina. Am I really going to go to Virginia twice a two week? I'm sorry. What am I doing to myself? You're going to like it. It's the home of Thomas Jefferson. And then also September 27th. I'm going to be in Milwaukee. If you want to see where I'm going to be, go to anytoons.com. You want to see where we're going to be. Go to the last podcast on the left.com. There's a lot of fun stuff coming down the pipe, especially in October. I'm loving everything that's going on these days. And I love you boys so much. Thank you for taking us down this fucking journey. Yeah. Thank y'all for coming along with me and with us on this. This has been fun. I've been wanting to do this for many many years. So it's nice to have it done. Can I go on vacation now, please? Yeah. Hail Satan. And let's never go back to Vietnam unless it's on a first-class plane ticket. Blown by Hugh Thompson. Hail Hugh Thompson. Hail Hugh Thompson.
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