LIEUT. GEN. WILLIAM R. PEERS, 69 LED INQUIRY INTO MY LAI MASSACRE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100100088-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 2, 2011
• Sequence Number: 88
• Publication Date: April 9, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/03/02 CIA-RDP90-01208R000100100088-6
ARTICLE APPEARED NEW YORK TIMES
ON PAGE _Z, -/44 9 April 1984
Lieut. Gen. William R. Peers, :69,
-Led Inquiry Into'My Lai Massacre
By WOLFGANG SAXON
. Lieut. Gen. William R. Peers; who He concluded- that'.a "tragedy of
headed the inquiry into the Army's- major. proportions" occurred at My Lai
handling of the 1968 My Lai?.massacre but that,reports of its enormity and the
in Vietnam, died Friday evening at number of victims had been shrunk at
Letterman Army Medical Center at the each rung of the ladder as the field re-
Presidio in San Francisco. General ports went up the chain of command.
Peers, who had suffered a heart attack His courage and thoroughness earned
last month, was 69 years old .and lived the Army much praise.
in Kentfield, Calif. The "Peers Report"- prompted ac-
combat commander, was chosen by top commanding officer-of the Americal
Pentagon officials in late 1969:to,look Division, Maj. .Gen. Samuel W:Koster,:~
into the massacre and, name those re- by then Superintendent at West Point. .
sponsible. It was a year. and ahalf after The officers were accused of.derelic-
:the assault on My Lai 4, and,public.re- tion of duty,;; suppression of evidence.
vulsion at the delayed revelations was and other offenses:
at its height.
Within months, charges against 13 of
News of the case fueled antiwar 'sen- those accused were dismissed on the
timent on American campuses. It also ground of insufficient evidence...'The
embittered American servicemen and 14th , a brigade commander, Col. Oran
veterans who saw themselves and the K. Henderson, ...was court-martialed
Army as being besmirched by one com- and acquitted- in 1971.
pany of men who had lost comrades in Calley-..Found Guilty of Murderf,
battle, some of whom:might have gone Eleven officers and enlisted men ac-
with under' the'. stress of combat
with an invisible foe. '. . tuallypresent at My Lai were charged
My Lai '4 was a hamlet.in the coastal separately after the Army's original in-
village of .Song My in north-central vestigation.? A platoon commander,
South Vietnam. How manypeople died Lieut. William L. Calley, was found
the morning of March 16,1969, remains guilty of murder. The others-were ac=
uncertain, but estimates. range far up- quitted or never tried.
ward from, 100.. .. Lieutenant Calley drew a life term,
`Tragedy of Major Proportions'
Units of the Americal Division were
ordered to clear the area of enemy sol-
diers who had it booby-trapped and
may or may not have been sniping at'
American troops. What slowly became
iknown later was that the dead included
villagers who had been raped, maimed
and killed by soldiers acting singly and
in groups amid the burning mains.
The welling outcry caused the Army
to throw : considerable resources and
energy into -the study of just how its
command ; chain had .dealt with the
situation at the time and whether there
had been an official cover-up. General
Peers assembled a staff of 90 in
December 1969. and in three months
heard 398 witnesses, took 20,000 pages
of testimony and inspected what was
left of My Lai.
United Press International, IM
Lieut. Geri. William R. Peers'
By. then General Peers had quietly
left the.service after.35 years in uni-
form. He was deputy commander of
the Eighth Army in South Korea in 1973
when the.. Army, announced he was
Action in World War II.
William Raymond Peers was born
June 14, 1914, in Stuart;. Iowa. He at-
tended high. school in Califomia,and
graduated in 1937 from the University
of California, Los Angeles, . where he
was on the'.varsityfootball and ,wres-
tling teams. .
He was commissioned a second lieu-
tenant in 1938 and saw action in World
which was reduced to 20 and then to. 10 z wiui wC vtt1LC Ut airateglc
years. He was freed in 1974 after three Services in northern Burma. His ex-
years of confinement to _ quarters atperiences went into a book he wrote
left the Arm with Dean Brelis, "Behind the Burma
Fort Benning' Ga.; and y. .~ Road." M
f th
l
'
ost o
e c
assified 260-page
Peers } A big, cigar-chomping he also
peared in print long before Mr. Calley's
release cleared the way for its formal
disclosure. Howard H. Callaway, then the Secre- t
tary of the Army, 'said at the time: ,
"The release of this report concludes a
dark chapter' in the Army's history.
This is a story which. is not a happy
one." .
Four months later, the Army re-;
leased 33 bound books containing 20,000
censored pages of raw data and testi-
mony on which the report was based.
Names not previously mentioned were:
deleted because they might have been
implicated by hearsay and innuendo.,
American spy teams to Japanese
prison, camps in China and Korea and
led. a Chinese parachute. assault on
Njing to occupy that city.
General Peers commanded the
Fourth Division in heavy battles in
Vietnam's Central Highlands in 1967.
When heading the special My Lai in-
quiry, he was, posted in Washington as]
chief of the Army reserve. His decora-
tions included a Distinguished Service
Medal. with two oak leaf clusters, a Sil-
ver Star. and the 'Distinguished Flying
Cross.
General. ? Peers is survived by, his I
wife, the former Rose Mary .Rau; two
daughters, Barbara Peers Hicks of
.Fredericksburg, -Va., and Christina
Peers Neely of Newark, Ohio; a broth-
er, Delbert Peers of Hemet, Calif.;, and
two grandchildren..: " ?
i,.._ A funeral - service was . to be held
,,Wednesday at the Cathedral Chapel, ?
Presidio ?of San Francisco.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/03/02 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100100088-6