It was the slimmest of tips. But the information made sense given what I had learned in my time at the Pentagon. I still had Defense Department press credentials to get me in the building for a book I was then researching, and so I began at the beginning. The alleged massacre had taken place eighteen months earlier.
There are terrific resources at the Pentagon, and I started by going through all the murder cases that originated in each service. Nothing remotely matched the tip I had, although the number of alleged rapes that were dropped because the alleged victim was said to be an enemy nurse was more than a little distressing. I tried going through the daily newspapers for the fall of 1968, but that was clearly a nonstarter.
One of the most important things I learned in the Army and as a correspondent in the Pentagon was that there was no need to kiss ass with senior officers. Say what you have to say. Amid my hunting for a magical court case or a Hail Mary newspaper clip, I was walking down a Pentagon corridor to grab a sandwich when I saw a bright and unassuming colonel I knew from my AP days. I’d heard he’d made general after being wounded in Vietnam.
And now he was back in the Pentagon. He was limping forward a few yards in front of me. So I strolled up, gave him a little punch in the arm, and told him I’d heard he’d shot himself in the knee to make general. Sounds silly, but making fun is part of Army culture. He told me he’d heard I’d been fired. Touché.
So I asked him what his new assignment was. He said he was working for General Westmoreland. The general had been running the Vietnam War at the time of My Lai, and he had to know about the events there. And so I told the officer that I’d heard there was a terrible massacre in Vietnam the year before. What he did next was a magic moment for a journalist. He wheeled around and in obvious disgust slammed his hand on his bad knee and said something like: “That asshole Calley didn’t kill anyone higher than this. There’s nothing there, Sy.”
Bingo.