We must impeach Cheney first so he doesn't become President and then get Bush.
These two men are more dangerous than Hitler could have ever been. They are destroying this country in ways the average person cannot see and they are doing it right in front of our faces.Now that you have awakened to the Clinton rhetoric and mean-spirited campaign techniques, open your eyes to the government now in charge because they are sneaking in the back door while we were not looking with other atrocities to go along with the ones they have already accomplished. Take a look:http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=1C069D94-3048-5C12-0008145013ED2D03 - take a look at this "spy bill" that the dems are allowing Bush to spy on Americans without warrants. Gee whiz, hasn't he been "big brother" enough already?
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/bush-cheney-drugs.html - take a look at the "drug money" which Haliburton achieved success under Cheney's tenure as CEO. And you wonder why drugs are even more available to your youngsters while nobody of interest is being arrested or tried for bringing them into the country. You must know that "high crimes" are initiated in "high places", don't you?
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/ - another impeachment process for the Bush/Cheney lies which started this hateful war in the first place.
http://www.stewweb.com/9-11WTCBush-CheneyTreason.htm - by the way, you can't even copy the address of this site, you have to physically type it in, which I did. This site has some very controversial information, but the 9/11 disaster is what should interest you because it has been proven that it was caused not by terrorist, but by Bush/Cheney. Please read it and investigate for yourself. Take a special look at the Octopus-Bush-Crime Family Flow Chart. It's definitely interesting to say the least.
http://www.mikehersh.com/Bush_and_Cheney_
Block_911_Investigation_.shtml - see how Bush-Cheney is blocking a 9/11 investigation and ask yourself "what are they hiding?"
http://www.geocities.com/kidhistory/bcr911.htm - If what I say is right, the whole US government should end up behind bars. - Andreas von Bülow, former German governmment minister, author of "Die CIA und der 11. September."
http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?ChannelID=73 - a very detailed description of the 9/11 theories and structural damage. A must read.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U_GISl3aAA - 9/11 video about the cover stories that hit the TV immediately.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZekosYOmXc&feature=related - what happened to flight 93? No debris was there other than dirt and ash. What happened to the people?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7cvjBViV7g - video showing bombs exploding from the towers.
If we don't investigate our government more thoroughly, we will be allowing murderers to escape. Bush/Cheney killed our songs, daughters, mothers, fathers and all the people murdered in the towers. How can we allow them to get away with this. Every 9/11 surviving family should sue the government, to bring this vicious crime out in the open.
WAKE UP AMERICA!
http://www.usalone.net/cgi-bin/oen.cgi?qnum=3440
The "Winter Soldier Investigation" was a media event sponsored by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War intended to publicize war crimes and atrocities by the United States Armed Forces and their allies in the Vietnam War. The VVAW challenged the morality and conduct of the war by showing the direct relationship between military policies and war crimes in Vietnam. The three-day gathering of 109 veterans and 16 civilians took place in Detroit, Michigan, from January 31-February 2, 1971. Discharged servicemen from each branch of military service, as well as civilian contractors, medical personnel and academics, all gave testimony about war crimes they had committed or witnessed during the years of 1963-1970.[1][2][3]
With the exception of Pacifica Radio, the event was not covered extensively outside Detroit. However, several journalists and film crews recorded the event, and a documentary film called Winter Soldier was released in 1972. A complete transcript was later entered into the Congressional Record. The Winter Soldier hearings were followed in April and May 1973 by the Fulbright Hearings, convened by Senator J. William Fulbright, chair of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
Prompted by numerous investigations into war crimes and allegations of war crimes, such as the Russell Tribunal, National Veterans Inquiry and Citizens Commission of Inquiry (CCI), the Vietnam Veterans Against the War wanted to have a large scale public hearing. With the courts martial for the My Lai Massacre making front page news, and the recent disclosure by members of the CIA's Phoenix Program of its record of alleged human rights violations, the VVAW was determined to expose a broad pattern of war crimes in Vietnam. The Winter Soldier Investigation (WSI) was intended to prove that incidents like My Lai were not isolated and rare occurrences, but were instead the frequent and predictable result of official American war policy.
The purpose of the Winter Soldier Investigation was to show that American policies in Vietnam had led to war crimes. In the words of one participant veteran, Donald Dzagulones,
"We gathered not to sensationalize our service but to decry the travesty that was Lt. William Calley's trial for the My Lai Massacre. The U.S. had established the principle of culpability with the Nuremberg trials of the Nazis. Following those principles, we held that if Calley were responsible, so were his superiors up the chain of command . even to the president. The causes of My Lai and the brutality of the Vietnam War were rooted in the policies of our government as executed by our military commanders."
The name "Winter Soldier Investigation" was proposed by Mark Lane,[14] and was derived from Thomas Paine's first Crisis paper, written in December 1776.
When future Senator John Kerry, then a decorated Lieutenant in the Naval Reserve (Inactive), later spoke before a Senate Committee, he explained,
"We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country; we could be quiet; we could hold our silence; we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, the fact that the crimes threaten it, not reds, and not redcoats but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out."[3]
PLANNING
The collecting of testimony from veterans had begun under the auspice of the Citizens Commission of Inquiry the previous year, and it took almost two months of on-site planning in Detroit to organize the conference. Detroit was proposed by Fonda because of its central location in the American heartland, and the "blue-collar" social status of most of the residents. The steering committee set up a collective in a house on the industrial east side of Detroit with the help of Catholic antiwar activists; and five clergymen of different denominations, including the director of missions for the Detroit Metropolitan Council of Churches, offered housing for the witnesses.
The program consisted primarily of testimony, with 109 Vietnam veterans to appear on panels arranged by unit so they could corroborate each other's reports. Grouping these veterans by unit would also help to establish that events and practices to which they testified were unit-wide policy, and not just random and rare occurrences. Several civilian experts who had been to Vietnam were also to speak during this event. Arrangements had been made to include the testimony of several expatriated Vietnamese students residing in Canada, but they were denied visas to the United States by the Canadian government.[citation needed]
Organizers also investigated the legal implications of veterans publicly admitting to criminal acts which they had witnessed or participated in. With legal advice from the Center for Constitutional Rights, the organizers were assured that the armed forces could not charge or try veterans for crimes committed while they were on active duty.[15] The veterans giving testimony were also instructed not to reveal the specific names of others involved in war crimes. The goal of these hearings was not to indict individual soldiers, but instead to expose the frequency of criminal behavior and its relationship to U.S. war policy.[16]
Verification of participants' credibility
The organizers of the Winter Soldier Investigation took several steps to guarantee the validity of the participants.
Each veteran's authenticity was checked before the hearings by the investigation event organizers, and subsequently by reporters and Pentagon officials. In addition, they also gave specific details about their units and the locations where the events had occurred. Those who wanted to testify were carefully screened by the officers of VVAW, and care was taken to verify the service records and testimony of the veterans. After the severe criticism of the accuracy of Mark Lane's book about atrocities a month before the event, the organizers of the Winter Soldier Investigation made the credibility of the participants a top priority. All veterans participating in Winter Soldier were required to bring their discharge papers (DD-214's) and IDs.[17]
In this connection, the identifying military affiliation of each veteran testifying, including in almost all cases, the dates of service, appears on the roster for each panel that was included with the testimony in the Congressional Record [4]
As noted in VVAW records, each veteran's authenticity and testimony were checked after the hearings by Nixon's "plumbers." Charles Colson was assigned the task. In a confidential "Plan to Counteract Viet Nam Veterans Against the War", Colson wrote, "The men that participated in the pseudo-atrocity hearings in Detroit will be checked to ascertain if they are genuine combat veterans." At one point, the Nixon team suggested in a memo about VVAW, "Several of their regional coordinators are former Kennedy supporters." [18] VVAW was also targeted by the FBI for observation as a possible dissident organization.
Although military documentation was provided, some media organizations such as the Detroit News made further inquiries into the hearings by questioning the authenticity of the testifying veterans. Discharge papers were examined; military records were checked against the Pentagon records; after all their digging, not one fraudulent veteran was found.[19]
Several months after the Winter Soldier Investigation, NBC News reported on an incident with VVAW executive and Winter Soldier co-organizer Al Hubbard. Hubbard lied about being an officer during a Meet the Press television interview, and was confronted about it shortly afterward. Journalist William Overend states he had met Hubbard and he had been introduced as being a former Air Force captain. Overend learned Hubbard was only an E-5 Staff Sergeant when Hubbard had apologized on the Today Show a few days later, for exaggerating his rank. NBC's Frank Jordan recalls, "He was convinced no one would listen to a black man who was also an enlisted man." Hubbard did not testify at Winter Soldier, but detractors of the WSI frequently raise Hubbard's fabrication in attempts to generate doubt.
Fritz Efaw, a Chapter Representative of VVAW, stated: "The claims that the WSI hearings contained falsified testimony from men who were not veterans is an old one, and it's definitely false. The testimony was startling even at the time it took place: startling to the general public, startling to the military and the Nixon administration, and startling to those who participated because each of them knew a piece of the story, but the hearings brought a great many of them together for the first time and provided a venue in which they could be heard for the first time. It's hardly surprising that those on the other side would set out almost immediately to discredit them."
Seven years after the hearings, writer Guenter Lewy claimed in his book, America in Vietnam, that allegations against Marines were investigated by the Naval Investigative Service. Lewy wrote that the report stated that some veterans contacted by the NIS did not attend the WSI hearing in Detroit or had never been to Detroit, and many refused to be interviewed. However, government officials today cannot verify the report's existence, and no other historian has seen it.[5] Lewy later said that he could not recall if he had actually seen the alleged report or simply been told of its contents.[6] [7]
See the text of this excerpt from Guenter Lewy's book, America in Vietnam, in wikiquote
In addition, the Army found the allegations made by 46 veterans at the hearings to merit further inquiry, and were able to identify 43 of the complainants. The Army's CID investigators attempted to contact 41 of the people who testified; of the 36 they were able to locate, 31 submitted to interviews. [8]
One participant, Jamie Henry, had reported the massacre he described at the hearings [9] to the Army, which investigated and subsequently confirmed the story. However, the details of the investigation were not made public until 2006, when the Los Angeles Times published the declassified information [10].
Winter Soldier panels
Opening statement excerpt
In an opening statement at the beginning of the three day hearing, William Crandall stated:
...We went to preserve the peace and our testimony will show that we have set all of Indochina aflame. We went to defend the Vietnamese people and our testimony will show that we are committing genocide against them. We went to fight for freedom and our testimony will show that we have turned Vietnam into a series of concentration camps.
We went to guarantee the right of self-determination to the people of South Vietnam and our testimony will show that we are forcing a corrupt and dictatorial government upon them. We went to work toward the brotherhood of man and our testimony will show that our strategy and tactics are permeated with racism. We went to protect America and our testimony will show why our country is being torn apart by what we are doing in Vietnam...
It has often been remarked but seldom remembered that war itself is a crime. Yet a war crime is more and other than war. It is an atrocity beyond the usual barbaric bounds of war. It is legal definition growing out of custom and tradition supported by every civilized nation in the world including our own. It is an act beyond the pale of acceptable actions even in war. Deliberate killing or torturing of prisoners of war is a war crime. Deliberate destruction without military purpose of civilian communities is a war crime. The use of certain arms and armaments and of gas is a war crime. The forcible relocation of population for any purpose is a war crime. All of these crimes have been committed by the U.S. Government over the past ten years in Indochina. An estimated one million South Vietnamese civilians have been killed because of these war crimes. A good portion of the reported 700,000 National Liberation Front and North Vietnamese soldiers killed have died as a result of these war crimes and no one knows how many North Vietnamese civilians, Cambodian civilians, and Laotian civilians have died as a result of these war crimes.
But we intend to tell more. We intend to tell who it was that gave us those orders; that created that policy; that set that standard of war bordering on full and final genocide. We intend to demonstrate that My Lai was no unusual occurrence, other than, perhaps, the number of victims killed all in one place, all at one time, all by one platoon of us. We intend to show that the policies of Americal Division which inevitably resulted in My Lai were the policies of other Army and Marine Divisions as well. We intend to show that war crimes in Vietnam did not start in March, 1968, or in the village of Son My or with one Lt. William Calley. We intend to indict those really responsible for My Lai, for Vietnam, for attempted genocide ... You who hear or read our testimony will be able to conclude for yourselves who is responsible. We are here to bear witness not against America, but against those policy makers who are perverting America.
Senator Hatfield urges Congress, State Department and Defense Department to act
On Monday, April 5, 1971, Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon made the following address on the Senate Floor:
Mr. President, the moral sensitivity of the Nation has been aroused by the conviction of Lt. William Calley. More clearly than before, this incident has focused the fundamental moral questions that our Nation must confront regarding our conduct in Indochina.
The Department of Defense said in its recent statement relating to the Calley conviction:
The Department of the Army has had a moral and legal obligation to adopt a continuing policy of investigating fully all substantive allegations or violations of the laws of war involving American personnel. Every allegation of misconduct on the battlefield -- regardless of the rank or position of the person purportedly responsible -- must be thoroughly explored.
There has recently been brought to my attention testimony relating to the policy and conduct of American forces in Indochina which has grave and very serious implications. The testimony is given by honorably discharged veterans who had served in Vietnam, and was conducted by Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Three days of testimony were conducted in Detroit, Mich. on January 31, February 1, and 2 of this year. This group, which represents 11,000 veterans, plans to send several thousand to Washington the week of April 19 to petition Congress for full congressional hearings.
I, of course, have no way of ascertaining the veracity of all the testimony given, and I am not in agreement with certain of the statements and judgments made by those who testified. However, I believe that the allegations made by these Americans, who served their country in Vietnam, are so serious and so grave that they demand the full study by the appropriate committees of Congress as well as by the executive branch.
The testimony and allegations raised by the experience of these veterans includes charges regarding: the torture and murder of suspects and prisoners of war captured by Americans and South Vietnamese forces; the wanton killing of innocent, unarmed civilians; the brutalization and rape of Vietnamese women in the villages; military policies which enabled indiscriminate bombing and the random firing of artillery into villages which resulted in the burning to death of women, children and old people; the widespread defoliation of lands of forests; the use of various types of gases; the mutilation of enemy bodies, and others.
A recurrent theme running throughout the testimony is that of institutionalized racist attitudes of the military in their training of the men who are sent to Vietnam--training which has indoctrinated them to think of all Vietnamese as "gooks" and subhuman.
Further, the thrust of the allegations made in the 3-day testimony is that such actions were the consequence of reasonable and known policy adopted by our military commanders and that the knowledge of incidents resulting from these policies was widely shared.
Several of the allegations made in this testimony would place the United States in violation of the Geneva Convention and other international agreements relating to the conduct of war which have been ratified by our Government.
Therefore, the necessity for investigating fully these alleged actions, and all evidence that bears on our actions in Indochina and the international agreements we have ratified cannot be overstated.
* Therefore, first I ask unanimous consent that the testimony presented by over 100 honorably discharged veterans in Detroit be placed in the Congressional Record. I realize that the testimony is very lengthy, but its full force and content must be made available so that it can be read and judged on its own merits.
* Second, I will transmit this testimony to the Department of Defense and the Department of State and urge, in accord with its stated policy, that the evidence and allegations it contains be fully investigated.
* Third, I urge the appropriate committees of the Congress to conduct hearings on the policies governing the use of military force in Indochina and their relation to international agreements our country has ratified.
* Fourth, I recommend consideration be given to forming a special commission that would investigate in full these matters and would provide a forum to assess the moral consequences of our involvement in Indochina to us as a Nation and a people.
We as a Nation must find the proper way to honestly confront the moral consequences of our actions, and to corporately turn ourselves from the thinking and the policy that has degraded our moral posture and to recognize that out of contrition and self-examination can come a genuine rebirth of the ideas we hold as a people.
The testimony that follows and the steps I have advocated are presented with this hope. I ask unanimous consent to have the testimony printed in the Extensions of Remarks.
Guenter Lewy on the Winter Soldier Investigation, America in Vietnam
From pages 316-317
"Another organization active in airing charges of American atrocities in Vietnam was the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), which was founded in 1967; by 1970 it was said to have 600 members. From 31 January to 2 February 1971, the VVAW, with financial backing from actress Janes Fonda, convened a hearing, known as the Winter Soldier Investigation, in the city of Detroit. More than 100 veterans and 16 civilians testified at this hearing about "war crimes which they either committed or witnessed"; some of them had given similar testimony at the CCI inquiry in Washington. The allegations included using prisoners for target practice and subjecting them to a variety of grisly tortures to extract information, cutting off the ears of dead VCs, throwing VC suspects out of helicopters, burning villages, gang rapes of women, packing the vagina of a North Vietnamese nurse full of grease with a grease gun, and the like."
"Among the persons assisting the VVAW in organizing and preparing this hearing was Mark Lane, author of a book attacking the Warren Commission probe of the Kennedy Assassination and more recently of "Conversations with Americans", a book of interviews with Vietnam veterans about war crimes. On 22 December 1970 Lane's book had received a highly critical review in the "New York Times Book Review" by Neil Sheehan, who was able to show that some of the alleged "witnesses" of Lane's war crimes had never even served in Vietnam while others had not been in the combat situations they described in horrid detail. Writing in the "Saturday Review" a few days later, James Reston, Jr., called "Conversations with Americans" "a hodgepodge of hearsay" which ignored "a soldiers talent for embellishment" and a "disreputable book." To prevent the Detroit hearing from being tainted by such irregularities, all of the veterans testifying fully identified the units in which they had served and provided geographical descriptions of where the alleged atrocities had taken place."
"Yet the appearance of exactitude was deceptive. Sen. Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon was impressed by the charges made by the veterans and inserted the transcript of the Detroit hearing into the "Congressional Record." Furthermore, he asked the commandant of the Marine Corps to investigate the numerous allegations of wrongdoing made against the Marine in particular. The results of this investigation, carried out by the Naval Investigative Service, are interesting and revealing. Many of the veterans, though assured that they would not be questioned about atrocities they might have committed personally, refused to be interviewed. One of the active members of the VVAW told investigators that the leadership had directed the entire membership not to cooperate with military authorities. A black Marine who agreed to be interviewed was unable to provide details of the outrages he had described at the hearing, but he called the Vietnam War "one huge atrocity" and "a racist plot." He admitted that the question of atrocities had not occurred to him while he was in Vietnam, and that he had been assisted in the preparation of his testimony by a member of the Nation of Islam. But the most damaging finding consisted of the sworn statements of several veterans, corroborated by witnesses, that they had in fact not attended the hearing in Detroit. One of them had never been to Detroit in all his life. He did not know, he stated, who might have used his name."
"Incidents similar to some of those described at the VVAW hearing undoubtedly did occur. We know that hamlets were destroyed, prisoners tortured, and corpses mutilated. Yet these incidents either (as in the destruction of hamlets) did not violate the law of war or took place in breach of existing regulations. In either case, they were not, as alleged, part of a "criminal policy." The VVAW's use of fake witnesses and the failure to cooperate with military authorities and to provide crucial details of the incidents further cast serious doubt on the professed desire to serve the causes of justice and humanity. It is more likely that this inquiry, like others earlier and later, had primarily political motives and goals."
As noted by author Gerald Nicosia in his history of the Vietnam veterans movement Home to War,
Winter Soldier heralded a significant change of opinion in the American public toward the Vietnam veterans -- not only in terms of a new willingness to hear their side of things, but also in the amount of respect and credibility they were accorded. Over a dozen members of Congress endorsed the hearings. South Dakota Senator George S. McGovern, who would challenge Richard Nixon in the 1972 Presidential race, and Congressman John Conyers, Jr., of Michigan called for full Congressional investigations into charges leveled by the veterans at Winter Soldier; and Berkeley's radical black Congressman Ronald Dellums offered the veterans office space in Washington, where they could repeat their charges within a stone's throw of the House Armed Forces Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Perhaps most striking about Winter Soldier was the great humility of all involved. These men, who deserved to be honored for the courage it took to bare their pain and to assume responsibility for actions their country had asked them to perform -- even as they had already been honored (at least minimally, with medals and citations) for risking their lives in the performance of those deeds -- now came before the world in an attitude of profound apology. On the last night of Winter Soldier, several carloads of veterans drove across the border to Windsor, Canada, to meet with a delegation of Vietnamese students in exile, who had been denied visas by the Canadian government to come to Detroit for the hearings. These American veterans signed their own symbolic "people's peace treaty" with the Vietnamese there. As Jan Barry recalls, the gesture was intended as a means of embracing the people they had harmed, of asking forgiveness for those they had killed.
Despite the leftist orientation of many of its sponsors, Winter Soldier did not come off as an attack on the United States. What the veterans insisted over and over was that America knew better than to do the things it was doing in Vietnam. They pointed out that search-and-destroy missions, free-fire zones, the relocation of people into strategic hamlets (which were enclosed by barbed-wire, and hardly more congenial than a concentration camp), defoliation of agricultural land, and B-52 pattern-bombing raids against undefended villages and populated areas (which refused to distinguish between combatants and civilians) were all in violation of codes and treaties which the United States had previously signed or accepted: the Rules of Land Warfare, the Geneva Conventions and Accords, and the Nuremberg Charter.
In effect, the veterans were asking America to listen to its own much-touted morality, and to begin to practice what it had spent two centuries preaching. At the same time, though, the veterans were careful to point out that the war crimes the United States was committing in Vietnam did not stem from the misconduct of individual soldiers -- which the government had tried to establish by scapegoating Calley and a handful of his fellow officers -- but resulted rather "from conscious military policies... designed by the military brass, National Security Council, and major universities and corporate institutions, and passed down through the chain of command for conversion into Standard Operational Procedures (SOPs) in the field.
While no one involved with the Winter Soldier Investigation, and subsequent Senate hearings, ever accused "all" servicemen of misconduct - it was made evident the problem had grown beyond "isolated incident" status. The problem was perceived by the participants as epidemic, and was seen as ignored and even condoned by leaders at all levels in the military and government. Winter Soldier was the culmination of efforts to bring national attention to this situation, and to expedite the end of America's participation in the Vietnam conflict.
Testimony given during the three day event covered both broad policy concerns, such as the use of chemical agents, indiscriminate bombing, and free-fire zones as well as more specific and unusual war crime incidents, including rape, torture and desecration of the dead. The testifying veterans were usually grouped by branch of military service, and geographic location of service. Before launching into their detailed testimony, each gave a brief statement of personal information including rank, division, unit, length of service and a summary of what their testimony would cover. While only 109 veterans gave testimony, over 700 veterans attended the hearing. Excerpts from the testimony transcripts:
Stephen Craig: "...My testimony covers the maltreatment of prisoners, the suspects actually, and a convoy running down an old woman with no reason at all..."
Rusty Sachs: "...my testimony concerns the leveling of villages for no valid reason, throwing Viet Cong suspects from the aircraft after binding them and gagging them with copper wire..."
Scott Camil: "...My testimony involves burning of villages with civilians in them, the cutting off of ears, cutting off of heads, torturing of prisoners, calling in of artillery on villages for games, corpsmen killing wounded prisoners..."
Kenneth Campbell: "...My testimony will consist of eyewitnessing and participating in the calling in of artillery on undefended villages, mutilation of bodies, killing of civilians, mistreatment of civilians..."
Fred Nienke: "...My testimony includes killing of non-combatants, destruction of Vietnamese property and livestock, use of chemical agents and the use of torture in interpreting prisoners..."
After giving their brief initial statements, a moderator had each of them elaborate upon their testimony, and then the press and observers were given time to ask questions of the veterans.
The previously secret two-week U.S. penetration into Laos in February, 1969, which was part of Operation Dewey canyon (primarily taking place in South Vietnam at the time), became a controversial subject at this event since the Pentagon had only days before denied that any American troops had crossed the Laotian border and carried out military operations. Five veterans from the Third Marine regiment who had returned from the war were present at the WSI and refuted the claims of the Pentagon. They described their secret operations in Laos and also revealed that they were given meticulous orders to hide the fact that they were American including, but not limited to, the removal of identification from uniforms and switching to Russian arms that were typically used by the NVA. They were also ordered to deny all knowledge of involvement of American troops in Laos. A Marine Corps spokesman persisted in issuing a statement at the WSI saying, "no platoons or any large number of Marines ever crossed the border." This quickly prompted investigations by American media such as the "Detroit Free Press," "St. Louis Post-Dispatch" and the "Boston Globe" which were successful in turning up testimonies from other veterans that they had crossed into Laos throughout a 16 month period extending through all of 1971, well past the enactment of the Cooper-Church Amendment forbidding such actions (Cooper Church came into effect in January 1971). The 1969 operation was committed by a company commander and was subsequently authorized by General Creighton Abrams, commander of all US forces in Vietnam. The reason given for moving his company into Laos was to combat the North Vietnamese Army and protect his men, later claiming "The political implications of going into Laos were pretty unimportant to me then." [14] Investigations also revealed that the Laos operations extended beyond the Marines as helicopter pilots from the 101st Airborne admitted participation in the American co-ordinated secret operation called Prairie Fire (helicopter pilots were not forbidden under Cooper-Church). [15]
Mainstream media all but ignored the Winter Soldier Investigation. The East Coast papers refused to cover the hearings, other than a New York Times story a week later. The local field reporter for the Times, Jerry M. Flint, commented with disinterest, "this stuff happens in all wars." In a February 7, 1971 article he wrote that "much of what they said had been reported or televised before, even from Vietnam. What was different here was the number of veterans present." Several of the VVAW representatives speculated that there was an "official censorship blackout," and they would express this theory later in their newsletter.
A few articles that were sympathetic to the veterans appeared in lesser-known publications, and Pacifica Radio, known for its left-wing perspective, gave the event considerable coverage. The CBS television crew that showed up were impressed, but only three minutes made it to the nightly news on the first night . three minutes that were "mostly irrelevant to the subject," according to VVAW. [16]
The Detroit Free Press printed several stories about the event, including comments from the military. This included confirmation by the Pentagon that WSI participants investigated by reporters were indeed Vietnam veterans. The Pentagons denials of large scale U.S. activity in Laos was reported as well, until reporters learned from several marines not involved with WSI that operations in Laos had been conducted.
The words of the participants have been permanently recorded in the Congressional Record.[22] Portions of the testimony, as well as some photos of the event, appear in a book produced by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and John Kerry entitled The New Soldier.
In addition, film footage of the event, as well as some pre-event and post-event footage, and commentary can be found in Winter Soldier: A film / Winterfilm Collective in association with Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Winterfilm, Inc., 1972.
* Film version: 1972, B&W, 16mm, 93min.
* Videotape: 1992, B&W with some color, 110 or 130 minutes
* The Winterfilm Collective consisted of: Fred Aranow, Nancy Baker, Joe Bangert, Rhetta Barron, Robert Fiore, David Gillis, David Grubin, Jeff Holstein, Barbara Jarvis, Al Kaupas, Barbara Kopple, Mark Lenix, Michael Lesser, Nancy Miller, Lee Osborne, Lucy Massie Phenix, Roger Phenix, Benay Rubenstein, Michael Weil.
A documentary film of the event, called Winter Soldier, was first released in February, 1972 at the Cinema 2 theater in the Whitney Museum in Manhattan, New York. In May, 1972 it was reviewed at the Berlin and Cannes Film Festivals.[23][24] Due to the disturbing nature of the subject matter about an ongoing war, it got little distribution and support at that time and had been archived by its creators, collectively called the Winterfilm Collective.[25] [26][27] In September, 2005, it was re-released across the U.S. in small art house theatres. Most of the media reviews have regarded the film positively, with some calling it a "powerful" and "emotional" record of the era. [17]
Despite significant fund raising efforts by supporters of the VVAW, the cost of the Winter Soldier Investigation event financially bankrupted the organization. Organizers of the event hoped to recoup some of their expenditures through the above mentioned book, film and recording deals. Orders were taken at the event for copies of the film footage, which was to be made available for $300.
In 2005, a website wintersoldierfilm.com was established to spread information about this documentary and to spread information about further showings of the film (in the United States). [18]
http://lists.village.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Winter_Soldier/WS_entry.html
# Winter Soldier Investigation Testimony Full Congressional Record of Testimony online
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