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My Lai

The sun scorches down on the car, baking the black vinyl seats. They feel pliant as new tar. Tank top and shorts—the uniform of choice—offers no respite, and my bandanna is soaked in minutes. Sweat stings my eyes.

He didn’t want the job but felt he should do it. For the first time, the soldier who tracked down the My Lai story for the office of the inspector general in 1969 tells what it was like to do some of this era’s grimmest detective work.

In the early spring of 1969 I was an Army colonel recently assigned to the office of the inspector general in Washington, and I was not particularly happy about it; I have always disliked living in Washington, and I think that most infantry officers would rat

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