I found a lawyer named Latimer in the Washington, D.C., telephone book. He knew nothing about a murder case involving the Vietnam War but thought I might want to get in touch with George Latimer, a retired judge on the Military Court of Appeals who was once again practicing law. Latimer had joined a Salt Lake City law firm, and I got him on the phone. I told him I knew he was representing Calley and added, with some honesty, that I had a hunch his client was being railroaded. (I did not add that I thought he was a criminal.) Latimer, speaking very deliberately, as he always did, acknowledged that yes, Calley was his client and it was a miscarriage of justice. Touchdown. I told the judge I was flying to the West Coast soon and asked if he would mind if I arranged a stopover in Salt Lake City. We settled on a day in early November. I had no need to go to the West Coast but thought it best to hide my eagerness. I also spent half a day in the Pentagon library reading a number of the judge’s decisions, and even briefing a few of them; it was a reminder of what I did not do enough of during my underachieving year at the University of Chicago Law School.
I had an American Express card but did not have enough money to start flying around at the last minute doing interviews. I had heard that Philip Stern, an antiwar philanthropist in Washington, was thinking of endowing a fund for investigative journalism, and I called him, told him what I was chasing, and got a commitment within a few minutes for one thousand dollars. It was a relief to have that money in my bank account, but I would have found another way to fly to Salt Lake City, philanthropy or not. Stern eventually endowed the Fund for Investigative Journalism, an important foundation that continues today to finance innovative newspaper and magazine stories.
I took an early flight and arrived at Latimer’s modest office by ten o’clock on a weekday morning. I guessed the judge, who was an elder in the Mormon Church, to be in his late fifties. It was clear at first glance that he was not a man full of irony and whimsy. I masked my acute anxiety by telling Latimer that I had reviewed a number of his appellate decisions and asked him to explain why he did what he did in certain instances. He did so. It was an extreme example of the Hersh rule: Never begin an interview by asking core questions. I wanted him to know I was smart and capable of some abstract thought. And I wanted him to like me and, perhaps, trust me.
We got to the case in hand, and Latimer told me that the proceeding against his client was a gross miscarriage of justice but he was bound by the army’s version of grand jury rules and could not discuss specifics. He did say that the army offered Calley a plea bargain—one that involved jail time—and he had told the army, “Never.” The message was clear: He believed his client was a fall guy for the mistakes, if any, of more senior officers during an intense firefight. It also was clear that the judge was in regular telephone contact with Calley, wherever he might be, in or out of jail. At this point, for reasons I still do not understand, but perhaps having to do with Latimer’s sense that the army was piling on his client, I told Latimer that I understood Calley was being accused of killing 150 civilians during the army assault on My Lai. The only number I knew was the vague 75 deaths Cowan had cited, but the army officer and the congressional aide with whom I had discussed the case spoke of wild shootings and insanity. I also knew from my readings of the Russell Tribunal and other antiwar reportage that the senseless killing of hundreds was commonplace in American attacks on rural villages in South Vietnam.
That fictional number got to Latimer, who, visibly angered, went to a file cabinet in his office, snatched a folder, pulled a few pages from it, walked back to his desk—I was seated across from him—and flung the pages in front of me. It was an army charge sheet accusing First Lieutenant William L. Calley Jr. of the premeditated murder of 109 “Oriental” human beings. Even in my moment of exultation—I knew it was going to end the war and win prizes—it was stunning to see the number Calley was accused of murdering and the description of the dead as “Orientals.” Did the army mean to suggest that one Oriental life was somehow worth less than that of a white American? It was an ugly adjective.
Latimer quickly turned the charge sheet around and pushed it closer to him. I have very little memory of what happened next in our chat, because I spent that time—twenty minutes or so—pretending to take notes as we talked. What I really was doing was reading the document upside down, albeit very slowly, and copying the charge sheet word for word. At some point Latimer broke off the interview and refused to say where Calley was or in any way help me get to him. I was pretty sure the judge sensed he’d gone too far with me, and I did not dare ask him for a copy of the charge sheet, for fear that he would instruct me that I could not use what I had seen. At the door, I thanked him for spending the morning with me and said I assumed that Calley was still at Fort Benning, awaiting a court-martial, and I was going to hunt him down. If I was wrong, I added, he should please tell me. Latimer stared at me for a moment and said nothing, and I flew home. I had to find Calley, and Benning was the place to start.
I was riddled with regret by the time I got back to Washington. How could I not have asked Latimer for a copy of the army charge sheet? A story this big written by someone like me—a fringe player known to be antiwar—could only work if I had a copy of that document. I remember fantasizing about what would happen had I been a reporter for The Washington Post or the Chicago Sun-Times and called my editor after the Latimer interview to report that I had seen the charge sheet. He would ask if I had a copy of the document. I would say no and then be consigned to the obituary desk for my inability to get the goods.
I was afraid to go to The New York Times or any major newspaper with the story. I was a lone operator and feared being overtaken by the large staffs of skilled journalists available to the editors there. I did not see myself as a tipster. It was my story. David Obst, my fun-loving pal from the Dispatch News Service, was desperate for the story, but understood why I had to start at the top. I’d been contacted a month or so earlier by a senior editor at Life magazine, America’s most famed weekly, and asked whether I was interested in doing some reporting for them. I tracked down the editor and told him, cryptically, that I was working on a story that could change the course of the Vietnam War. Was he interested? Of course he was. We left it at that, and I took off very early one morning in the first week of November for Columbus, Georgia, the largest city adjacent to Fort Benning. The search for Calley was on.
Fort Benning, like most army bases in the United States, was an open facility, and I had no trouble driving onto the main post. I was stunned by its size. The base is roughly as big as all of New York City, some 285 square miles, with an airfield, a series of widely separate training areas, where live ammunition was being fired, and scores of living areas, known today as family villages. There were a hell of a lot of places to hide Calley, as the army apparently had chosen to do. I was undaunted; tracking down people who did not want to be found was vital to what I did for a living, and I was good at it. He was being held on a murder charge, and I assumed that meant he was in a prison, known in the army as a stockade or guardhouse, under the jurisdiction of the provost marshal, who was the equivalent of a chief of police for Fort Benning. My guess was that only a few of the most senior officers there knew about the Calley case, and so I began at the headquarters of the provost marshal’s main office. The soldiers working there were helpful and checked their records, but did not find a William Calley listed as a prisoner. Perhaps Calley was being kept under wraps at one of the many stockades that were scattered around the fort.
I got a good map of the base and began driving. The routine was the same at each of the prisons I visited: I parked my rental car in the spot reserved for the senior officer in charge, which was invariably empty, walked into the prison in my suit and tie, carrying a briefcase, and said to the corporal or sergeant in charge, in a brassy voice, “I’m looking for Bill Calley. Bring him out right away.” There was no Bill Calley anywhere. It took hours and more than one hundred miles to navigate just
a few of the stockades scattered around the fort, and I was beginning to feel the pressure of time. It was just past noon by the time I returned to the main post.
I found a pay phone and a base telephone directory in a post exchange (PX) cafeteria and began calling every club I could find—swimming, tennis, hunting, fishing, hiking. No member by the name of Calley. None of the gas stations I reached on the base serviced a car owned by Lieutenant Bill Calley. I even checked the directory of officers at Infantry Hall, the office that handled all the training needs on the base, whose primary mission at the time was to produce infantrymen for the Vietnam War. There was no Calley booked at any of the army hotels or quarters for junior officers on temporary assignment at Benning. After a frustrating few hours, I still had no clue to Calley’s whereabouts, nor did I know if he was still at Benning. I was hungry, running out of daylight, and more than a little anxious. I decided to take a short walk and a huge risk by stopping by the main office of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, whose lawyers would be prosecuting the case against Calley, if he was on the base. It was long after lunch hour, but the office was still empty, except for a lone sergeant. He could not have been more friendly as I introduced myself as a journalist from Washington and said I needed some help. His smile disappeared when I said I was looking for William Calley. He asked me to wait a moment. I asked why. He said he was under orders that if anyone asked about Calley, he was to call the colonel right away. That was enough for me, and I told the sergeant not to worry about it and began walking away. The sergeant got frantic and told me I could not leave. With that I began running out of the office and down the street, going harder with each stride. I did not want a colonel kicking me off the base. The sergeant chased after me for a few dozen yards and stopped. It was a scene out of a Marx Brothers movie.
Judge Latimer had given me the name of Calley’s military lawyer, a major named Kenneth Raby. I figured what the hell; I had nothing to lose by trying to find him. Not only was he in the base telephone book, he was in his office at a nearby combat-training unit. He paled when I told him I was a reporter and wanted to find Calley. I remember the major as tall, thin, and most unnerved by my presence. He refused to talk to me, but I was reassured, nonetheless, by the meeting; Calley was somewhere at Benning, and I was not going home until I found him.
I had a hamburger and a Coke at a PX and wondered, as I chewed, what the hell to do next. Then I remembered that Judge Latimer had told me that Calley, still on active duty in Vietnam, had been ordered to fly back to Benning in late August 1969. I recalled from my AP days in Correspondents Corridor that the military produced updated telephone books for the Pentagon every four months, beginning in January. If Benning did the same, and why wouldn’t it—there was a war on, and troops were coming and going—the telephone book that I had used hours earlier should be dated September 1969. It was. I dialed the operator and asked for the supervisor on duty, and when she got on the phone, I asked her to check the last batch of new listings for the May telephone book for a Lieutenant William L. Calley Jr. The lieutenant, when he returned from overseas, had yet to be prosecuted, and he would have had to have been parked somewhere on the base—and duly listed as a late entry in the telephone book. After a moment or so, the operator returned, told me she’d found my man, and then quickly rattled off a phone number and an address before hanging up. I did not understand a thing she said, between my jumpiness and her deep southern accent, and wasted precious time reconnecting with her. When I did, she spelled out, letter by letter, Calley’s assignment at the fort and his phone number. I had no interest in reaching him or leaving word for him by phone, but I needed the information to be able to physically confront the man.
Calley was attached to an engineering unit located in one of Fort Benning’s satellite training camps. The building was only a few miles from the main post, but it took me nearly an hour, through a maze of streets, to find the goddamn place. It was the living quarters for trainees and consisted of two three-story barracks linked by a one-story headquarters office. It was midafternoon, a few hours before the workday would end, and I had a premonition that I would find Calley stashed somewhere inside. Why not start with the office? Its heavy wooden door was divided, military style, into separate upper and lower halves, with only the upper half open. Captain Charles Lewellen was listed as the officer in charge, and I leaned into the office and told a clerk that I was a reporter from Washington and wondered if the captain was around. He was, round-bellied and full of smiles that immediately evaporated when I told him I was looking for Bill Calley. He told me he was not authorized to speak about Calley, and, as had happened before, he picked up a telephone and asked for the colonel as I stood in front of him. Once again, I beat it onto the street. Lewellen followed me outside and asked for a word. He essentially begged me to stay away. He explained that he had been passed over for promotion to major a number of times and would be forced to retire if it happened again, as it would if I found Calley. “Give me a break,” he said. “If you’ve got any questions about Calley, take them someplace else.”
Lewellen’s bizarre behavior stemmed from the fact that on March 16, 1968, he had been in an operations center that monitored the My Lai operation as it took place and had made a personal tape recording of the carnage—one that he did not turn over to investigators for eighteen months. I knew nothing of that, and I interpreted Lewellen’s effort to slow me down as evidence that Calley was very nearby, probably tucked away in one of the barracks I had yet to search. I mumbled some words of acquiescence to the bedraggled captain and began to walk away. After a few moments of scuffling about, I found a back door into the nearest barracks and walked through row after row of double bunk beds on the first floor, all empty and all neatly made up. I raced through the upper two floors, peering into each bed in the hope of finding my man. Nothing. I crossed to the second barracks, avoiding Captain Lewellen by scrambling on hands and knees past the still-closed bottom half of his office door. The eureka moment came on the second floor in the form of a young man, in uniform, with tousled blond hair, dead asleep in a top bunk. It had to be Calley. I was all dominance as I raised a leg and banged my foot on the side of the bunk, and said, “Wake up, Calley.” The young soldier, not yet twenty years old, yawned and said, “What the hell, man.” I do not remember what the name tag on his blouse said—something ending in “ski”—but it made clear I did not have Calley. I sat down in disappointment on a bunk bed facing the GI. What happened next was a vestige of my hating basic training in the army and trying out in the middle of it for the Fort Leonard Wood baseball team, which I made. Doing so enabled me to leave my fellow trainees after lunch to go to practice. It also meant I was in my bunk, dead asleep from the exhaustion of picking up a few ground balls, by the time my colleagues marched back to our barracks. And thus, amid my disappointment, out popped a question to the GI: “What the fuck are you doing sleeping in the middle of the day?”
It was a sad story. He had been scheduled to be released months earlier from active duty, but the army had lost his papers and he was still awaiting them. He was from a farming family in Ottumwa, Iowa, and it was harvest season, and his dad and others were doing his share of the work. Getting released by the army was a day-to-day question mark; meanwhile, he was getting in a lot of sleep. I was curious—how could I not be?—and asked the sad sack if he had been assigned anything to do during the day. Yeah, he said, “I sort the mail.” For everyone? Yes. Did he ever get mail for someone named Calley? “You mean that guy that killed all those people?” Yes, that guy.
The farmer-to-be told me that he had never met Calley but had been ordered to collect the lieutenant’s mail and deliver it every so often to his pal Smitty, the mail clerk at battalion headquarters. I was flushed with excitement but played it cool. Where’s that? Couple of miles away. Take me there. No way, the kid said. Smitty had just lost his sergeant stripes—something to do with too much boozing—and was in no mood to talk to a stranger. I k
new this was going to be easy; the kid had seen no action in weeks, and I was going to give him some. We synchronized our watches. It was nearly four o’clock, and I said that I had a rented Ford sedan that was a few hundred feet away and would pull up to the back door of the barracks in precisely seven minutes. Meet me then and take me to Smitty, I said. I raced off. He was where I wanted him to be, as I knew he would be, as I drove up. It took an excruciating fifteen or so minutes to drive to battalion headquarters, and the kid insisted on being driven back. I agreed to do so and hustled back to a parking lot in front of the headquarters.
It was an old one-story building that I knew from my days in the army—essentially a wooden shack with a small porch and a screen door. The door was open and a black sergeant was leaning against it in a chair, taking in the late afternoon Georgia sun, a toothpick in his mouth. I tucked in my shirt, drew my tie tight, grabbed my jacket and briefcase, and climbed out of the car, looking every bit like a lawyer, I hoped, and said, “Sergeant, get Smitty out here right now.” There was a big smile from the sergeant: He was probably thinking, what has that dumb fuckup Smitty done now? Out comes Smitty, not much older than my friend from Ottumwa, with threads hanging from the sleeves of his blouse, where his sergeant stripes had been. I say, “Get in the car,” and in he comes. He’s scared, but I quickly calm him down by telling him who I am and what I want. Smitty is apologetic and explains he knows little about Calley. Sure, he’s heard that the lieutenant had shot up a lot of people, but his contact with him is limited to collecting his mail and giving it to a courier who picks it up. He has no idea where Calley is living or where his mail ends up. I ask, resignedly, so there’s nothing on Calley in the battalion files? Well, says Smitty, we do have everyone’s 201 files. I knew that a 201 file is the military’s essential personnel folder that is kept for both enlisted men and officers. I say nothing. He adds, “I’d have to steal it to get it.” There’s a long pause. I say, “Well?” “I’ll try, mister.” Smitty goes inside—the sergeant looks at him but makes no move and asks no questions—and Smitty returns, suddenly much more animated, and slides into the seat next to mine. He opens his blouse and pulls out Lieutenant William L. Calley Jr.’s personnel file. I open it and the first page is the same charge sheet that I had seen days earlier in George Latimer’s office. There is more—an address, in nearby Columbus, where Calley is living. I take time to carefully copy the charge sheet, making sure I get every phrase right, and return the file to Smitty. He’s glad to have been a help—fuck the army. He leaves and I head for Calley’s new home.
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