FrontPage

Nation

World

Media

Culture

Technology

Commentary

On Sept. 29, 1999, The Associated Press provided extensive evidence that GIs killed a helpless group of civilians in the early days of the Korean War. Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen ordered an investigation of the accusations. In mid-April, the AP's report was awarded this year's Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. Not long afterward, military affairs writers at three news organizations -- U.S. News, The Baltimore Sun and the military journalism Web site stripes.com -- began looking into the background of one of the AP's sources, Edward L. Daily. The AP article and follow-up articles in other publications, including The New York Times, quoted Dailey extensively, and he was featured in a 30-minute special program by NBC News and a cover story in The Washington Post Magazine.

On May 12, 2000, U.S. News & World Report published a 10-page report, whose skeptical gist was summed up in the headline: "Doubts About a Korean 'Massacre' " followed by "American Soldiers allegedly slaughtered hundreds of innocent refugees at a place called No Gun Ri. A new review of the facts challenges that claim." Its work relied on archival documents and some interviews with the GIs quoted by The Associated Press, many of whom, it said, "do not support the thesis of the AP story."

Daily, a former GI who has emerged as a key figure in the Pentagon investigation into the alleged killings of unarmed refugees, has sparked a fierce debate among some veterans' groups, which have accused him of falsifying his service record. Daily, who has become a widely quoted source in news accounts of the alleged massacre near the Korean village of No Gun Ri, claimed to have received the Distinguished Service Cross and to have been taken prisoner by North Korean forces in the summer of 1950.

He joined an association for winners of the Distinguished Service Cross. In 1991, Morris G. Worley, the national adjutant of the Legion of Valor of the United States, concluded that Daily had falsified his supporting documents and kicked him out. Worley said he reviewed Daily's claim that he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation's second-highest award for valor in combat, and found that it was untrue. Worley says he informed Daily of his decision by letter about 12 years ago, and Daily responded "with various rationales, argument, and debate." None of it persuaded Worley to reconsider his decision. "If you can't validate the award, membership cannot be extended," Worley said, noting that his organization has fewer than 800 members, all of them recipients of the Medal of Honor or military services crosses like the Army's Distinguished Service Cross. " Daily couldn't validate [his claim for membership] because the medal didn't exist...He was awarded membership under false pretenses."

Daily's claims about being a POW are also suspect. Claude Watkins, the membership chairman of American Ex-POW, says he began reviewing Daily's claim that he was a prisoner of war after being questioned about it by the Baltimore Sun. Daily's only support for having been a POW was a letter from a chaplain in the Army's 7th Cavalry Regiment, the unit Daily says he served with in Korea. But Watkins questioned the chaplain, and he said his knowledge of Daily's claim "wasn't firsthand." Interviewed by U.S. News, the chaplain, retired Col. Frank Griepp, said he never met Daily until about 1990, when he was completing research on the book The Circuit-Riding Combat Chaplain. "Everything I put in my book about Daily came directly from Daily's mouth," Griepp said. "I had no proof of it... Of firsthand knowledge, I had none." Griepp furnished a letter to Watkins in April 1996 validating his claim to have been a POW. Watkins said last week that he is removing Daily's name from his organization's membership rolls. "He hasn't got any proof," Watkins said. "I'm going to toss him out-and he's lying about those decorations."

Last week's issue of U.S. News cited Army records indicating that Daily may not have been at No Gun Ri on the day of the alleged massacre, July 26, 1950, as he said. The records say Daily was a mechanic with a rear maintenance unit that was just arriving in Korea on July 26.

Late last week, the Pentagon issued a statement noting that some recent press reports had quoted unnamed Defense Department officials saying that American soldiers had intentionally fired at refugees at No Gun Ri. "No such conclusions, or any other conclusions, have been reached within the Department of Defense," the Pentagon statement said. The Army inquiry into No Gun Ri is not expected to be completed for several months.

Daily has been questioned by Army investigators about the discrepancies in his service record. One piece of evidence Daily has produced in support of his claim that he was a prisoner of war is a letter from the Army's adjutant general to Daily's mother. The letter, dated Aug. 31, 1950, states that Daily was reported missing in action on Aug. 12, 1950, and cites Daily's military identification number, O-5380215. Pentagon officials who have reviewed the letter say that ID number was never assigned to Daily; it was assigned to a Navy enlisted man who left the service after 1963. One letter supplied by Daily, purporting to be from the Army's adjutant general in 1950, carried a ZIP code. The U.S. Postal Service did not begin using ZIP codes until 1963.

The NBC News program "Dateline" relied heavily on Daily. The network's half-hour segment helped make the eloquent veteran the public face of GI guilt over No Gun Ri.

The AP reporters claim that the discrediting of Daily does not affect the accuracy of their Pulitzer Prize winning report. However Stephen G. Smith, the editor of U.S. News, describes Daily as "the linchpin" of the wire service's original report. "He's the one who ties it all together," Smith said. Because the AP account depends on what Smith calls "a mosaic of partial quotes," the fact that Daily's three quotes were vivid, full sentences dealing with the event, the orders and the veterans' feelings of guilt made him more crucial that the other veterans interviewed, Smith said.

Daily played a key role in the investigation. He gave Associated Press reporters a list of ex-soldiers' telephone numbers. And he admitted his own role in the atrocity at the South Korean hamlet of No Gun Ri, saying he slaughtered civilians on orders from his commanders and was still haunted by the sound of "little kids screaming."

As Associated Press reporters tried to track down the story of what happened at No Gun Ri, Daily made his own calls to fellow veterans, several of them said. "He tried to inform me how things happened," said Norman Tinkler, who is 69, a veteran who told the news service he had emptied a machine-gun clip on defenseless people. Tinkler stands by his account but says he cannot recall if The Associated Press or Daily called him first.

So embedded is Daily in the memories of some veterans that they still find it difficult to believe he was not with them at No Gun Ri. "I know that Daily was there," insisted Eugene Hesselman, another key witness in the original Associated Press account. "I know that. I know that."

Millard Gray, 75, of Fort Cobb, Okla., said he believed for years that Daily rescued him on the battlefield -- until a buddy pointed out that he would not have been able to recall anything immediately after being pummeled by a concussion grenade. Gray said he now realizes that his memory of Daily pulling him out of a foxhole to safety came from Daily. "I didn't know the difference," Gray said.

Charles J. Hanley, a reporter who worked on the Associated Press project and staunchly defends it, said that as many as 20 veterans confirmed some or all of Daily's account. However, Hanley acknowledged that Daily was a valuable source for the Associated Press, supplying ex-soldiers' telephone numbers early in the inquiry. Apparently, Daily spoke with most of the witnesses before the AP interviewed them, and it may be an impossible task to determine whether Daily was harvesting memories or creating them. "They all talked to each other in this investigation," Hanley admitted of the veterans.

In the fall of 1998, James Kerns, 70, a former sergeant in Piedmont, S.C., said Daily invited him to a workshop in Columbia. At the time, Kerns said, he had not yet been contacted by the Associated Press, but its reporters had begun asking others, including Daily, about No Gun Ri. While at the workshop, Kerns said, Daily asked him about the massacre. "He told me he had orders, but it wasn't the same order I had," Kerns said. Kerns then told The Associated Press that he was instructed to hold the civilians in place to protect the regiment's position, and that any firing was aimed over their heads.

On May 19, Seymour Topping, the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, said the Pulitzer board had re-examined and reaffirmed its award. "The board has reviewed all the documentation and is up to date on all that has been published, he said. "The board is taking no further action. There has been no expression of concern by any member of the board."

Search the Web.

The Haunted Wood
Soviet Espionage in America
Allen Weinstein & Alexander Vassiliev
This study of Soviet espionage in the United States focuses on Americans who, from the '30s through the '50s, passed information to Soviet agents.