(Via Milinet)


Date: 05/12/2000 6:17 PM

What Didn't Happen at No Gun Ri

I sent this last night to the Editor and Editorial Page Editor
of Colorado
Springs Gazette Telegraph, the largest paper in this heavily
military
city. After agreeing, on request of Joe Galloway who has done
the most
independently researched and hard hitting story, to wait until
the 10 page
US News and World Report story goes up on their web site this
afternoon.

You may forward this to whomever you like AFTER 3PM Friday, May
12th.

Subject: What Didn't Happen at No Gun Ri

As many of us who read all of the sensationalist AP press
stories of the
'massacre' at No Gun Ri, which you, and all the main street
press and
media blithly repeated, front page (with one small side story
about we who
'doubted' it happened the way it was reported) knew all along,
the full
story would eventually come out, no thanks to AP. It has. In
spades. Even
before the Army has completed its $2 million investigation.

'Lt' Ed Daily, the poster boy of the whole massacre - whose
picture you
ran, whose 'anguished' memories of hearing baby's screams after
he machine
gunned them over 30 minutes under direct orders by officers I
knew, to
kill them, which you quoted, and whose juicy recollections
pursuaded Tom
Brokaw of NBC television to fly him to Korea for tear jerking
scenes
'apologizing' to the victims - and which sensational story won
the
'investigative' AP reporting team which was bound and determined
to prove
a war crime a Pulitzer Prize - has turned out to be a 100%
fraud. Along
with some others who were there, claiming the same thing.

Daily was never at No Gun Ri or in the 7th Cav battalion which
was there;
he never received an order; to shoot civilians; he machine
gunned nobody,
never heard babies cries in the night; he never was an officer,
he never
won a battlefield commission, he never was a POW who escaped, he
never won
the DSC, Silver Star, Bronze Star, Purple Heart, nor even the
Combat
Infantry Badge, which he claimed. He was a PFC mechanic at the
1st Cavalry
Division level, in the rear, in Korea, and then, for only 54
days 9 months
later was he in the 7th Cav, as a Corporal, and made Sergeant
before he
transferred home, after a very short time in a line combat unit.

No order was ever given to kill those civilians in that tunnel.
Yes, some
civilians were killed there, but how many is yet to be announced
by the
Army, who'se going to remain tight lipped until all things are
investigated. It won't be 200, or 400, as you reported. I will
be suprised
if it is 20. And from incidental, and panic, firing. Not from
orders. And,
contrary to what the survivors claimed - that their tunnel was a
killing
ground for three days, the unit that was there was gone the
second day.

There simply was no 'massacre' at No Gun Ri. And Daily was a
fraud. How do
I know? Read it across 10 pages in US News and World Report
Monday - or as
early as Friday afternoon on their web site. Read it in the
Baltimore Sun,
probably Sunday. Seperate, not 'wire service' investigations.
Read it in
Stars and Stripes already - seperate investigation. You won't
read it from
the other researcher I know. And the Army is still tight lipped
- none of
my information came from them, I only gave them information. And
you won't
be able to reach Daily. He has checked himself into a VA
hospital -again -
claiming all this has given him a stroke. And oh yes, he has
been
receiving VA disability checks a long time for all the mental
problems
brought on by the horror of No Gun Ri. He told Brokaw that
himself. And
other veterans of the 7th Cav. And me.

I don't think I would trust the AP wire service on it right now.
<nasty
grimace> They may go into deep denial - for their precious
Pulitzer is at
stake. Will they have the guts to give back the Pulizter? Or
will you have
to join the chorus, editorially, to get the committee to take it
back? Do
you have the guts? I'll be watching. I'm not confident.
Journalists defend
their own - just like they accuse the military of.

Or will you, as I predict will most media who bought story
(without
checking the things that other journalists seem to have been
able to do)
and that is sweep Ed Daily under the table as quickly as
possible, and
keep speculating that something terrible happed at No Gun Ri
more than was
happening every where else that refugees stacked up, and the
real war
criminals - the North Koreans - slipped armed infiltrators into
our lines
with civilians as shields, and killed our men in the rear. And
killed
civilians whenever convenient to their cause.

But I will be even more watching to see what you do, to make
amends, now
that you hugely helped depress all the Korean War veterans in
this area,
turning them in your readers' mind into baby killers with craven
war
criminal officers - the very year that they, in their 70's were
about to
be at least acknowledged for what they did, and sacrificed, in
that war
exactly 50 years ago to turn back a cynical communist invasion.

Well, by the time you begrudgingly conclude what I have said
above is
right, I'll not be around much. For I fly to Seattle early next
Monday
through Thursday. Then I, and 350 of my West Point Class of '50
classmates
will be gathering at West Point the following week, where we
will stand on
the Plain and be honored by the Corps of Cadets on May 23d,
after I and a
few other classmates stand in the hallowed Chapel on the 22st,
and intone
the names of the over 180 of our dead classmates, 46 of whom
died in Korea
the largest number of any class killed in that bloody war. A
class of
young idealists defined by that 'Forgotton' War. And made up of
officers
who gave no orders to murder civilians, in that or any other
war. Who
commanded men who, unlike many from Vietnam, didn't complain, or
protest,
or massacre anyone except the overwhelming numbers of enemy
flung at them.
And they did not come home feeling sorry for themselves. Or try
to rip off
the VA with phony claims of 'post traumatic stress syndrome'.
Daily was
one of the very few bad ones.

No, we will continue to march to our own drum, and remain very,
very
skeptical of a press that increasingly feeds on itself, and
doesn't dig
deep enough, as Joe Galloway did.

But before you do anything, access www.oldcolo.com/~dave, and
drop down to
the 'Last Full Measure..' section and read, silently the names
of the 67
men who were killed in my company alone in that war. And think
before you
write. The rest of the page is what we, the living did. But we
can defend
ourselves and actions even today. While neither those 67, nor
any of the
other 1,092 officers and men of the 7th Cav who were killed in
that war
can speak, or rebut the allegations and gossip you repeated to
hundreds of
thousands. Think of them when you write. And think for
yourselves this
time. Don't let the Associated Press do your thinking for you.

You, and thousands of other press and media, by willy nilly
repeating the
AP story and starting a feeding frenzy, hurt a lot of people.
You have
some apologizing to do. And lots of Korean War veterans to honor
in the
coming months.

Dave Hughes Col (Ret)
US Army
dave@oldcolo.com
719-636-2040

At the first reading of that story I thought it was a phoney I guess Ed Daily wanted his "15 minutes of fame"

That so called witness was a flake. He was on drugs, couldn't remember what really happened, the dreams on drugs,I can't work. What a flake. To let a loser like that get as much credit as he got then have to almost retract everything, wow. What a Joke. Jose