Glenn Beck - Miracles and Massacres - True and Untold Stories of the Making of America

Then, as he was departing, Thompson made one last pass over the drainage ditch. He hovered low, and Morgan Campbell saw the gunners jump down and wade into all that death and gore to pull a small boy, alive, from the depths of the mountain of bodies.

It wasn’t until that moment that he understood what he had done. What they’d all done.

Campbell dropped to his knees, numb from the realization, gritted his teeth, and grabbed the barrel of his M60 with his bare right hand. The metal was still hot as a branding iron from all the killing he’d done. He held on tight, his skin burning to the bone, until the pain overcame him and finally swept his consciousness away.

Tuttle-Woods Convalescent Home

Camden, New Jersey

March 16, 2008

Except for the storm outside, the room was quiet again. Morgan Campbell had stopped talking, as though he’d reached a moment in the retelling of his past that he didn’t wish to venture beyond.

“And what happened next?” Julia Geller asked.

Campbell blinked a time or two.

“Next?”

“Yes. What happened to everyone?”

The old man answered slowly, as though each detail required a deeper search of his failing memory.

“They covered it up, that’s what happened next. They told us to shut up about My Lai, and then they sent all of us up into the highlands, the real dangerous country. We were up there, cut off from civilization, for fifty-eight days. I don’t think they wanted any of us who’d been part of the mission to ever come back.

“Same for Hugh Thompson. After they debriefed him they sent him out to one of the worst hellholes possible. He was shot down five times. The last crash broke his back. But Hugh had already raised such a stink that they had to investigate. Colonel Henderson handled the job himself. Surprise, surprise, it was a total whitewash. After a month his people issued their verdict: Only twenty civilians had been killed in My Lai that day, not four or five hundred. All twenty had apparently died by accident.

“It took more than a year before the American press got enough real information to take notice, and then the military finally had to take some real action. The first truth to come out was that our intel for that day had been completely wrong. The morning we came into My Lai the entire Forty-Eighth VC Battalion that we were supposed to wipe out was camped one hundred and fifty miles away.”

“There were trials and convictions,” Julia said. “I remember that much. What happened to everyone?”

“Captain Medina was brought up on charges,” Campbell said, “but F. Lee Bailey did for him what he later helped do for O. J. Simpson, and he got off with hardly a hitch. The heart of his defense was that he’d never given any orders to kill civilians.

“Calley was found guilty on twenty-two counts of premeditated murder and it caused an uproar among some. Jimmy Carter was the governor of Georgia at the time and he asked people to drive with their lights on for a week in protest of the verdict. George Wallace flew up from Alabama to visit Calley in the stockade and petition for a presidential pardon. State legislatures across the country made resolutions and requests for clemency.

“They handed down a life sentence for Calley, but a few days later Nixon intervened on his behalf and had him transferred to Fort Benning for a term of house arrest in a two-bedroom apartment. Three years later he was released for time served.

“I’m not sure if anyone was ever punished, not really—except for Hugh Thompson. Some congressman tried to get him court-martialed. He held a press conference and said that Hugh Thompson was the only one at My Lai that day who should be charged with a crime. Hugh got death threats and hate mail, and people drove by and threw dead animals onto his front porch.

It was thirty years before anyone in power ever bothered to officially call Hugh Thompson a hero and a patriot for what he did. In 1998 they gave him and his crew the Soldier’s Medal. That’s the highest award the U.S. Army can give for bravery in action not involving direct contact with the enemy.”

“And what about you?” Julia asked quietly.

“What about me?” Campbell repeated. His voice was weak; it was like he was fading away from where he’d been.

“Yes, Mr. Campbell. What happened to you?”

“I got off, all right.” He struggled against his restraints. “But don’t you see? I never really got away.”

• • •

Later that night, Everly Davison hung up his uniform, walked out, and never came into work again.

He watched the newspaper for days afterward, but Julia Geller’s story never appeared. When he called her up to ask about it, she told him that her editor had turned it down, saying there was nothing new in Morgan Campbell’s story, and certainly nothing that the paper’s dwindling audience would be very interested in reading about. In its place they ran a puff piece about some local beauty pageant for rich little girls and their pampered mothers.

That should have been the end of it, but something was sticking in Everly’s mind.

He kept thinking about Hugh Thompson, and the truth, and about doing the right thing, no matter if it meant you might never live it down. He thought of that old woman who’d died at the hands of those storm troopers for hire, of the guard who’d spoken up and been fired, and of the promotion he’d taken as a result.

Everly Davison picked the phone back up and called Julia Geller. He told her that he had an idea for another story, one that, if there was any justice left in this world, might just make the front page.

12

The Missing 9/11 Terrorist: The Power of Everyday Heroes

Orlando International Airport

August 4, 2001

Jose Melendez-Perez stood and observed the first row of customs agents screening passengers seeking admittance to the United States. From afar it all seemed pretty routine: Name, passport, nature of trip. Then give them a stamp and let them through . But Melendez-Perez knew better. This job was far from routine.

He checked his watch, his eyeglasses slipping a little down his angular nose. He stroked his salt-and-pepper mustache and reflected on how his job was not unlike combat: moments of extreme intensity, followed by long periods of quiet during which even the best were challenged to maintain their focus and discipline.

Seventeen hundred hours , he whispered to himself. After two combat tours in Vietnam and twenty-six years in the U.S. Army, Melendez-Perez found no need to transition to “civilian time.” His life was about protecting the United States of America—be it with a gun in some far-off land, or with a badge right here within shouting distance of one of the biggest tourist attractions in the world.

The muted television in the operations center was tuned to Fox News. The big stories of the day played out in a seemingly endless loop: large protests at the G-8 Summit in Genoa; Robert Mueller confirmed as FBI director two days earlier; a small car bomb attack in London, perpetrated by the IRA. The biggest news seemed to be about President Bush’s recent visit to Kosovo and NATO’s commitment to send peacekeeping troops to Macedonia to quell a Muslim uprising in the former Yugoslav republic.

Melendez-Perez thought back to the recent security briefings. There had been a few warnings in the aftermath of the G-8 Summit, but nothing that warranted a state of heightened security.

Melendez-Perez’s supervisor walked over and handed him a file. “Got a Saudi. No English. Incomplete I-94 and Customs Declaration. You got secondary.”

Melendez-Perez nodded. “Roger,” he said.

Incomplete arrival or departure forms and customs declarations were not unusual—especially among those who didn’t speak much English.