COLD WAR Chat: Hugh ThompsonU.S. Army helicopter pilot at My Lai

The following is an edited transcript of the COLD WAR chat conducted on Sunday December 6, 1998, with Hugh Thompson, U.S. Army pilot at the My Lai massacre. This discussion was moderated by COLD WAR Senior Editor Gregg Russell.
CNN Moderator: Our chat tonight is with Hugh Thompson, who on March 16, 1968, was a U.S. Army helicopter pilot in Vietnam. He landed his helicopter in the midst of the My Lai massacre. He stopped the killing of Vietnamese civilians by American soldiers and helped airlift the survivors to safety. For this act he received the prestigious Soldier's Medal.
Chat Participant: What happened when you flew over My Lai that day?
Hugh Thompson: We didn't just fly over one time. It was our mission to recon out in front of the American troops. That's what we were doing. I had gunship coverage. It wasn't probably until my second time on station after refueling that we noticed a large number of bodies, which were in our minds unexplained. The reason they were unexplained is they were women, kids, infants and old men. We started questioning what was going on here. We had not received fire. We were not being shot at and it was just unexplainable to us. We had about four direct encounters with the American forces, trying to help and assist civilians that had been wounded.
Chat Participant: How did you decide what to do?
Hugh Thompson: It was clear to us that something was going wrong. And at one time we had asked for assistance on a wounded civilian and a captain walked up and shot the girl we'd asked assistance for. Another time, we'd seen an irrigation ditch full of bodies, of which some were still living. We landed and talked to the Americans on the ground, said there are some wounded civilians in the ditch, can you help them out. And we were told, yes, we'll help them out of their misery. I said, quit joking, how bout helping them, and they said OK. As I took off, they walked to the ditch, and we heard machine-gun fire. [Crewmate] Glen Andreotta, in a shocked type voice, said, "My God, they are firing into the ditch." That was two times we'd asked for help and got people killed. Shortly after then, we saw some Vietnamese who had just made it to a bunker and were hiding inside the bunker. On the other side of the opening, we saw the American forces coming toward them. We just kind of figured those people were dead in about 15 seconds if we didn't do something. That's when we elected to land the aircraft between the American forces and the bunker.
Chat Participant: Had you ever heard of anything like this before?
Hugh Thompson: No, I had never come in contact with anything like this before.
Chat Participant: Hugh, does a day go by that you don't think about what you saw at My Lai?
Hugh Thompson: I try not to dwell on it. I was not received real well after the investigation started. I had to go to all the hearings and investigations and trials. And I wasn't treated real well at those. The public sentiment by that time was in favor of [Lt. William] Calley and it was more concerned about me threatening to shoot Americans that day than the murder of over 504 civilians. My worst beating came when I was before Congress.
Chat Participant: Do you think the soldiers did this on their own instinct or were they ordered?
Hugh Thompson: They received from what I understand, they received a briefing just as we did. Supposedly in their briefing, it was a little bit more direct. I don't think that [Capt. Ernest] Medina stood up there and told everybody involved in the operations to kill everybody that moved. Whether he had any private conversations with Calley ... I have no idea. The things that went wrong that day were poor leadership, peer pressure and prejudice.
Chat Participant: When you intervened, did the "friendly troops" threaten you or did they stop their assault due to your action?
Hugh Thompson: No, I was very upset at that time, and I thank God to this day that they stood where they were, and didn't prevent me from attempting to do what I was doing. I would hate to think about what could have happened or might have happened. I do thank the good Lord many times that they remained at ease.
Chat Participant: Do you feel that the Army responded to the events at My Lai in an appropriate manner? Should it have taken them 30 years for them to recognize your actions? There seems to be more than a little bit of irony in the fact that the United States is currently trying to bring Bosnian Serbs to trial in The Hague for committing similar atrocities while Calley seems to have gotten off so lightly.
Hugh Thompson: No I don't think that My Lai was handled properly. You mentioned taking 30 years. That was 30 years to award a Soldier's Medal, which ... I don't feel was for me. It was for everybody who served honorably, especially Glenn, who lost his life. The United States Government has not officially recognized My Lai. Don't anybody think that they just found out about this, and volunteered to award me the Soldier's Medal.
Chat Participant: What was your course of action as you left the scene? Who did you report to? How did your superiors in the battlefield respond to your report?
Hugh Thompson: I reported it first to my platoon leader, Lt. Barry Lloyd. From there, we went to the operations van, and talked to the operations officer and then immediately to Major Watkes -- who were very supportive, very concerned. Later that night, I reported it to my chaplain, Chaplain Chriswell, and in two or three days, reported it to the brigade commander.
Chat Participant: Do you think that the atrocities committed at My Lai where inevitable given the nature of the war in Vietnam?
Hugh Thompson: No. Soldiers are taught to fight. Soldiers are taught to kill the enemy. This is not what occurred at My Lai.
Chat Participant: Sir, what do you believe the U.S. government could do in 1998 to alleviate the chance of any more recurrences of My Lai in the future?
Hugh Thompson: Well, I was on a panel two weeks ago at the University of South Carolina, at which time the commanding general from Fort Jackson was there also, as this was a seminar on ethics and correct procedures on the battlefield. They asked him what the Army was doing to prevent future My Lais. His answer was they have increased basic training by a week and they teach nothing but classes on ethics and how to handle yourself. My question to him afterwards, because I didn't want to embarrass him, was, "General, at any time during your classes on doing the morally right thing and ethics, are the two words My Lai mentioned?" And his answer was no. They say they've admitted it, they say it shouldn't have happened. It's just not true. There was a ceremony in Vietnam at My Lai for the 30th anniversary. No American representation was there, besides me and [former crewmate and door-gunner] Larry Colburn and Mike Wallace and his news crew. And a call was even placed to the ambassador asking if he was coming and his answer was no. Mr. Wallace asked him why. And his answer was that he wasn't invited. Which was not a true statement.
Chat Participant: Has the Vietnamese government recognized your actions at My Lai and have you received any awards from them?
Hugh Thompson: When we were at My Lai on March 16, 1998, we were well recognized by the Vietnamese government -- given letters and gifts and thanked by all the survivors and all the people in that area for what we did. But the most amazing thing: A comment came from a lady we were speaking with and [she] said, 'Why didn't any of the ones who participated come?' And I was feeling very low then and didn't know what to expect her next statement to be. Her next statement was very shocking. Because it was, "so we could forgive them." That blew me away. Would you forgive them? I can't. We met three that day that we had rescued. That was very good for me personally.
Chat Participant: You must be proud of what you did.
Hugh Thompson: I think what we did that day was correct, the correct thing to do. I had a real hard time for 30 years, not really 30 years, because interest waned, but during all the trials and investigations, I had a real hard time understanding why in the world everybody was trying to make me the bad guy. It's hard to live with that.
Chat Participant: Mr. Thompson, what do you think were the factors that allowed My Lai to happen? Do you think it was an isolated incident or just the one that got people's attention?
Hugh Thompson: I think My Lai was a very isolated incident. Don't misunderstand me. I know civilians get killed in war. And I know that civilians get murdered in war. I've had other people tell me this happens all the time. They weren't there. They don't realize how large My Lai was. The Americans, I think, state 112 got killed. The Vietnamese figures 504, and I think they missed a lot. There was over 500 people murdered that day. I would have a hard time living with myself if I thought I was part of an action such as this. More than likely, larger numbers of people had been killed that day by artillery or air power, but not marched down into a ditch and murdered.
Chat Participant: What was your view of the war immediately prior to this incident? And what was it afterward?
Hugh Thompson: I was a military person, I was sent there to fight a war. My country deemed this war appropriate. So one incident by a very small group of people is not going to change my opinion of the war.
Chat Participant: Hugh, do you think that anything positive came out of our involvement in the Asian conflict?
Hugh Thompson: That one's never been put to me before. If our government has learned anything from mistakes, yes, something positive came out of it.
Chat Participant: Do you think our government has learned?
Hugh Thompson: I don't know. I think we need to select our leaders with a lot of serious thought. We need some negotiators first and fighters second. Nobody wins in war. I just got back from Norway, and it was brought out to me there that 2,700 people per day on average get killed as a direct result of conflict. War conflict. Out of that, nine out of 10 are civilians. And out of that, 50 percent are children. This is going on today, as we speak.
Chat Participant: Do you think it would have been more difficult to intervene had you been on the ground ... just another grunt?
Hugh Thompson: No, our job that day was to hang ourselves out like a carrot on the end of a stick in front of the donkey. My crew was willing to give our lives to save the people, the American soldiers on the ground. That was my job. I wouldn't take part [in] it in the air, and I wouldn't take part in it if I was on the ground. It's very important to point out that not everybody on the ground took part in it. Some people say we had a lot of courage doing what we did. But there was a man on the ground that had a lot more courage than we did. He blew his foot off to get the hell out of the area after being threatened. A soldier in Charlie company did that. That takes courage to me.
Chat Participant: You were there, in Chu Lai, during the Peers investigation [into My Lai]. Did you get mistreatment by any of the people who knew what was going on?
Hugh Thompson: No, I did not get mistreated, because I was told by Gen. [W.R.] Peers to travel in civilian clothes, to fly civilian aircraft, and don't talk with anybody. Very few people knew who I was while I was in Vietnam. I was not around anybody without General Peers there as well.
Chat Participant: Do you feel it took courage to refuse to fight the war in the first place?
Hugh Thompson: Yes, in retrospect, I think it took a lot of courage. According to history today, we shouldn't have been there. So going against the norm, I guess, would demand a whole lot of courage.
Chat Participant: Does your experience at My Lai ever come up in your work with other veterans? If so, how?
Hugh Thompson: Everybody has been very supportive. Overwhelmingly supportive since March 1998. I will assure you, it was not that way before.
Chat Participant: What happened to you while the Army was investigating the massacre?
Hugh Thompson: My first involvement with them was orders to report to the department of the Army [Inspector General] in Washington. I had no idea why I was going there. So naturally, I was very scared. The first question out of his mouth was, where was I on March 16, 1968? And I had no idea what he was talking about. The incident was totally blacked out of my mind. So naturally, it turned from questioning to more of an interrogation, at which time I realized what he was talking about. It didn't get any better. There was a lot of concern for me supposedly, for having threatened to kill a lieutenant, instead of the murdering of innocent civilians. And it didn't get any better. You have very senior congressmen coming after you, you best better get afraid. There's a book coming out and it ain't going to be pretty.
Chat Participant: Do you think that the soldiers involved in the massacre were/are bad people or just caught in a bad situation?
Hugh Thompson: They did bad things. I'm not saying that makes them bad people. I can live with myself at night. I hope they can live with themselves.
Chat Participant: Does it bother you that field officers above Calley were not held more responsible?
Hugh Thompson: I do not think that justice was served. But I'm not the one to question our judicial system. Most of the time it works. I don't think it worked that time. General Peers recommended court martial for 30 something people. And only four or five were actually court martialed. Our Congress was doing something to hinder any court martials that ever came about. They succeeded in one of them.
Chat Participant: What do you think is the most lasting legacy of the war?
Hugh Thompson: All you hear talk about is My Lai. I would think that could be classified as a legacy. Nobody won in Vietnam. It's a real hard question.
Chat Participant: Do you think that the Army was more at fault than Calley for the massacre
Hugh Thompson: Yes, like I said before, what I think are the big causes of that were leadership. And there was no good leadership on the ground that day. The Army is responsible for its leaders.
CNN Moderator: Join us next Sunday at 9:30 p.m. EST for another live COLD WAR chat.