Tiger Force - Investigations of War Crimes

Investigations of War Crimes

On October 19 2003, Michael D. Sallah, a reporter at the Toledo Blade newspaper, obtained unreleased, confidential records of U.S. Army commander Henry Tufts. One file in these records referred to a previously unpublished war crimes investigation known as the Coy Allegation. To investigate this further, Sallah gained access to a large collection of documents produced by the investigation held at the National Archives in College Park, MD.

Sallah found that between 1971 and 1975 the Army's Criminal Investigation Command had investigated the Tiger Force unit for alleged war crimes committed between May and November 1967. The documents included sworn statements from many Tiger Force veterans, which detailed war crimes allegedly committed by Tiger Force members during the Song Ve Valley and Operation Wheeler military campaigns. The statements, from both individuals who allegedly participated in the war crimes and those that did not, described war crimes such as the following:

• the routine torture and execution of prisoners
• the routine practice of intentionally killing unarmed Vietnamese villagers including men, women, children, and elderly people
• the routine practice of cutting off and collecting the ears of victims
• the practice of wearing necklaces composed of human ears
• the practice of cutting off and collecting the scalps of victims
• incidents where soldiers would plant weapons on murdered Vietnamese villagers
• an incident where a young mother was drugged, raped, and then executed
• an incident where a soldier killed a baby and cut off his or her head after the baby's mother was killed

The investigators concluded that many of the war crimes indeed took place. Despite this, the Army decided not to pursue any prosecutions.

For instance, when Capt. Harold McGaha first landed in the Operations area where the Tigers were waiting, he was taken aback. He noticed that several were wearing what he recognized as human ears. It wasn’t a secret at the base that some soldiers were mutilating bodies. This was not isolated to Tiger Force, but according to some reports, occurred to varying degrees in other Army infantry and Marine units.

Violence and murder were both recognized and encouraged by military officials. Col. Morse ordered troops to rack up a body count of 327 casualties in order to match the battalions infantry designation, 327th, however by the end of the campaign soldiers were congratulated for their 1000th kill.

After studying the documents, Sallah and fellow reporter Mitch Weiss located and interviewed dozens of veterans who served in Tiger Force during the period in question as well as the CID investigators who later carried out the Army's inquiry. The reporters also traveled to Vietnam and tracked down numerous residents of Song Ve Valley who identified themselves as witnesses. Sallah and Weiss reported that the war crimes were corroborated by both veterans and Song Ve Valley residents. The reporters also managed to track down dozens of additional investigative records not included in the National Archives.

In October 2003, the reporters published their findings in a series of articles in the Toledo Blade. Subsequently, the New York Times performed their own investigation, contacting a few Tiger Force veterans and corroborating the Toledo Blade's findings.

Since the Toledo Blade story, the United States Army has opened a review of the former Tiger Force investigation, but has not yet provided much additional information. On May 11, 2004, Lt. Col. Pamela Hart informed Toledo Blade reporters that she had been too busy responding to prisoner abuse by U.S. soldiers in Iraq to check on the status of the Tiger Force case. The Toledo Blade has not reported on any more recent updates from the U.S. Army.

Reporters Michael D. Sallah, Mitch Weiss and Joe Mahr received multiple awards for their series:

• In 2003, the reporters won the IRE Medal.
• In 2003, the reporters won the Sigma Delta Chi Award for investigative reporting, for publications with a circulation of 100,000 or greater.
• In 2004, the reporters won the Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Newspapers.
• In 2004, the reporters won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.

In 2006, Sallah, now an investigative reporter with The Washington Post, and Weiss, an investigative reporter with The Associated Press, co-authored a book chronicling their findings: Tiger Force: A True Story of Men and War (Little, Brown and Company).