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Michael Sallah Describes Pulitzer Prize-Winning Tiger Force Investigation

Jordan Lee |
October 24, 2012 | 1:25 a.m. PDT

Staff Reporter

Mike Sallah [Toledo Blade]
Mike Sallah [Toledo Blade]

The story of Tiger Force landed on Mike Sallah’s desk in the form of a bundle of confidential military records, handed over by a retired army Colonel, Henry Tufts.  

The Colonel didn’t particularly like or trust newspaper men, but he had a friend at the Toledo Blade, the daily Ohio newspaper where Sallah worked, so he decided to let the journalists look through the old army files to see if they could find anything useful. 

The folder held a collection of unreleased records and criminal cases, including files on the My Lai war crime investigation.  The My Lai Massacre in 1968 refers to the mass killing spree of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians--women, children, and elderly--by the frustrated soldiers of the Charlie Company.  It was a disturbing black mark on the U.S.’s record in Vietnam.  

But My Lai had been extensively covered by the press.  Sallah was looking for something new, something that others had missed.

He found his story in an 18-page file titled the Coy Allegation.  The file held the results of a war crimes investigation into a series of atrocities committed by a special-ops Army platoon called Tiger Force, which had been deployed in Vietnam.  

The elite soldier group had been mentioned for its service at Dak To when its parent battalion was honored with the 1968 Presidential Unit Citation for outstanding conduct. 

The medaled war heroes didn’t match up with the horrific crimes Sallah found recorded in the file.  

“I started reading, and it was some disturbing stuff.  Babies being beheaded, ears being cut off and worn as trophies, mass underground graves,” Sallah said. 

Sallah thought the case would probably have already been covered, especially since the crimes described were so brutal.  But after running basic internet searches, he did not find any record of the Coy Allegation or Tiger Force ever having been mentioned in the press.   

“I figured this was a case that had never been told,” said Sallah, who initially assumed that journalists had just missed it.  

But after a few more weeks of background checks and research, Sallah realized that the story hadn’t been missed.  It had been covered up.

“The army had deliberately buried Tiger Force,” said Sallah, “The case had never seen the light of day.”   

When Sallah issued a Public Records Act asking for the files on the Tiger Force military trial, the Army denied his request.  

He had a breakthrough when he went to the National Archives Library in in Washington D.C. and gained access to the copious documents produced by the Army’s investigation into Tiger Force.  He verified names of soldiers and investigators involved, and read through testimonies of soldiers who admitted that egregious crimes had taken place in the Song Ve Valley and during a military campaign called Operation Wheeler. 

The soldiers described routine torture and execution of prisoners, rape, mutilating the dead bodies of Vietnamese civilians, and planting weapons on the bodies of the previously unarmed villagers they had murdered.  

Sallah tracked down Gustav Apsey, the war crime investigator named in the documents.  The elderly Apsey was living in Tacoma, Washington when he got a call from Sallah. 

“Do you remember the Tiger Force case?”

“My God, I can’t believe someone is calling after 30 years.” 

Apsey told him that he couldn’t talk about the case, but he verified that there had never been a disposition.  The investigation’s conclusion was that the war crimes had taken place, but the case had been closed, and the soldiers had never been prosecuted. 

Sallah had struck gold.  He had found a story that was both historically significant and promised to expose an army cover-up. 

“The story had two markers.  First, [Tiger Force] was the longest series of war crimes ever recorded,” said Sallah. “And secondly, it prompted the longest war crimes investigation.” 

Sallah got the okay from his editor-in-chief to pursue the story, and he was joined by fellow Blade journalists Mitch Weiss and Joe Mahr. 

It wasn’t difficult tracing down the Tiger Force veterans.  And surprisingly, getting the soldiers to talk about the platoon and even their crimes was not the hardest part of the investigation Sallah said.

“Some of them didn’t want to talk of course, and others wanted to talk about battles.  But a lot of [the soldiers] actually wanted to get some of their crimes off their chests.  They wanted to confess.” 

Sallah and his team traveled to Vietnam, where they spent 16 days trekking through jungle villages and using old army grid maps to re-trace the movements of the Tiger Force platoon. 

They found elderly farmers who lived in the Song Ve Valley and used translators to ask them if they remembered a group of American soldiers that had been there thirty years earlier. 

“We had to be very careful, because we wanted to be truthful,” said Sallah.  “We wanted to make sure that the accounts matched up.” 

Sallah said the farmers’ stories aligned almost perfectly.  For example, they all told him the same story of a young boy who was leading two blind people through the fields to escape when the three were brutally shot down by Tiger Force soldiers.  

Once they were back in Ohio with all the materials and interviews, Sallah and Weiss did the bulk of the writing.  The whole process had taken eight months from start to finish.  

Tiger Force won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism in 2004.  The story had a powerful impact, but perhaps not to the extent the journalists had hoped. 

Blade publisher John Robinson Block, left, celebrates with reporters Mitch Weiss, Michael Sallah, and Joe Mahr and photographer Andy Morrison, right, after The Blade learned it had won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for its 'Buries Secrets, brutal Truths' series on the Vietnam War [Toledoblade.com].
Blade publisher John Robinson Block, left, celebrates with reporters Mitch Weiss, Michael Sallah, and Joe Mahr and photographer Andy Morrison, right, after The Blade learned it had won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for its 'Buries Secrets, brutal Truths' series on the Vietnam War [Toledoblade.com].

The Army reopened the Tiger Force case, but Sallah said no action was ever taken beyond that extra probe.  

“The evidence was serious enough that it could have gotten the retired general court-marshaled,” Sallah said. 

Sallah is now an investigative reporter and editor at the Miami Herald, but will soon be leaving to join the Washington Post’s investigative unit.  

A series he edited on public housing corruption won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting.  He was also a finalist for a 2012 Pulitzer for a series he wrote on conditions in Florida’s assisted living facilities. 

Sallah’s advice for aspiring investigative reporters is: “Be relentless, be patient, and do all your research.” 

He also says that public documents are a crucial element in any investigative piece because they back up the facts and lay a credible base.  Sallah calls them the “building blocks” of the story, and an investigative reporter can’t afford to overlook them.    

Follow reporter Jordan Lee on Twitter or send her an email.

 



 

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