The New York Times has given a pass to a deceptive Pentagon investigation into the No Gun Ri massacre. Sixteen months after the Associated Press published its Pulitzer Prize-winning expose of the massacre by U.S. forces in the Korean War (9/30/99), the Pentagon report states that although “an unknown number of Korean civilians were killed or injured” by U.S. troops, “the deaths and injuries of civilians, where they occurred, were an unfortunate tragedy inherent to war and not a deliberate killing.”
Since the AP story first ran, damning new evidence has come to light in the form of declassified military documents showing clearly that orders were given to shoot all refugees approaching American lines. In addition, testimony from American veterans shows that these orders were passed on to U.S. soldiers at No Gun Ri and several veterans who were at the scene recalled being under orders to shoot.
In order to “conclude” that the refugee shootings were not deliberate, the Pentagon resorted to concocting a series of tortured rationalizations for ignoring many of the inconvenient facts turned up by its own investigators. Korean survivors of the massacre have called the report a “whitewash” (Agence France Presse, 1/11/01).
Yet New York Times reporter Elizabeth Becker (1/12/01) took the Pentagon’s self-exoneration entirely at face value. No criticism or dissent from the Pentagon’s spin was reported in her piece. Later in the week, AP sent out an analysis (1/13/01) highlighting some of the Pentagon report’s omissions (written by the lead reporter on AP‘s original prize-winning investigation), but it was ignored by the Times, even though the paper originally ran the agency’s 1999 No Gun Ri story on its front page.
Becker’s article failed to point out that the Army’s lengthy Inspector General report at one point admitted– albeit in an evasive way– that “several soldiers” interviewed by Army investigators “were adamant that there was an order” to fire on refugees at No Gun Ri. According to the South Korean report of the same investigation, there were in fact 17 such soldiers. But the Pentagon dismissed the testimony of these 17 veterans because “they had no information to support their assertions”– they did not personally receive the order from their commander and they did not know where the order originated.
Among the 17 veterans who said there were orders to shoot refugees were two men, Lawrence Levine and James Crume, who handled radio and message traffic for the Army regiment at No Gun Ri. An AP article last November (11/22/00) reported that the two men gave the Army sworn statements saying that orders to fire on civilians came down the Army chain of command and were passed on to the units at No Gun Ri.
“I’m sure the battalion commander and the S3 [operations officer] discussed it even before they put the order out to stop the refugees,” Crume told AP. “All I know is that the order was given– ‘you’re not going through’– and the order was given to the heavy weapons company, and that was it.” Levine and Crume’s statements were never quoted or mentioned in the Pentagon report. Becker’s article ignored them as well.
Another crucial piece of evidence ignored by Becker– though it has been publicly known since last June– is a declassified memo written by a top Air Force officer in Korea one day before the No Gun Ri massacre. The memo said: “The Army has requested that we strafe all civilian refugee parties that are noted approaching our positions. To date we have complied with the Army request in this respect.”
The memo went on to note that the policy “is sure to receive wide publicity and may cause embarrassment to the U.S. Air Force and to the U.S. government in its relations with the United Nations.” The Pentagon investigators dismissed the memo– which was titled “Policy on Strafing Civilian Refugees”– because it was referring to a “request,” “not an order.” (Newsday highlighted the Air Force memo in a January 19 piece headlined “New Account of No Gun Ri; AF Memo: Army Sought Strafing.”)
Another order to shoot civilian refugees, which was reported in the AP‘s original No Gun Ri story, was given by an 8th Cavalry Regiment liason officer in charge of relaying orders from the headquarters of the 1st Cavalry Division. The officer gave the following instructions to his regiment: “No refugees to cross the front lines. Fire everyone trying to cross lines. Use discretion in case of women and children.” The Pentagon report explained that this was “not an order” but “more likely the liaison officer’s misinterpretation” of orders that were issued 48 hours later.
Becker falsely reported that “the South Korean team [of investigators] agreed with the Army that American soldiers were not ordered to shoot at the refugees.” Becker was apparently referring to the joint U.S.-South Korean “Statement of Mutual Understanding,” which included several carefully worded sentences crafted to give the impression that no evidence of orders was found. But the joint statement pointedly omits any definitive judgement that soldiers were not under orders to shoot.
In fact, the South Koreans’ own report, published separately from the American one, states: “We cannot rule out the possibility that there was an order for a mortar attack.” Indeed, AP reported last December (12/20/00) that South Korean officials were hoping “to persuade the Pentagon to drop its insistence that no evidence exists that the shootings were carried out under orders.”
The Pentagon report says there is no documentary evidence that orders to shoot refugees were passed to the troops at No Gun Ri. But neither the report nor Becker’s article mentioned that the 7th Cavalry regiment’s journal for July 1950– the one document that shows which orders were given to the No Gun Ri units on the day of the massacre– is missing from the National Archives. (The journals of the other two regiments in the 1st Cavalry Division are not missing.)
In contrast to Becker’s article, Agence France Presse (1/12/01) ran an excellent and balanced account of the Pentagon report by Washington reporter Jim Mannion. The dispatch began:
“U.S. soldiers killed or injured an unconfirmed number of refugees near No Gun Ri during a confused withdrawal in the early days of the Korean War, but U.S. commanders did not order troops to shoot and kill civilians, an army investigation concluded Thursday.
“The army reached that no-fault conclusion despite finding references in U.S. military records that appear to authorize firing on Korean civilians, including an air force memo stating that it had complied with an army request to strafe all civilian refugees approaching U.S. positions.”
ACTION: Contact the New York Times and ask them to publish a serious examination of the Pentagon’s No Gun Ri report, looking at all the available evidence and not just at what the U.S. Army has said.
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