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Cover-up: [the Army's secret investigation of the massacre at My lai 4,
The Pulitzer Prize winner who first disclosed the massacre at My Lai 4 uncovers the full story of how those involved - from private to general - kept it secret. What he reveals is shocking - from the amorphous but very real "West Point Protective Association" to the fact that an extensive but closed investigation by the Army itself covered up another massacre by the same unit on the same morning.
305 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1972
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About the author
Seymour M. Hersh
35 books450 followersSeymour (Sy) Myron Hersh is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and author based in Washington, D.C. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine on military and security matters. He has also won two National Magazine Awards and is a "five-time Polk winner and recipient of the 2004 George Orwell Award."
He first gained worldwide recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. His 2004 reports on the US military's mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison gained much attention.
He first gained worldwide recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. His 2004 reports on the US military's mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison gained much attention.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 10, 2022
Why are the Pulitzer Prize books usually such a disappointment?
I had high hopes for Seymour M. Hersh's work because he was an experienced reporter, but he did not meet even my lowest expectations. With the familiar pathos of journalists, Hersh writes in a mysterious tone that promises the reader a big revelation of something that they had not known before. The tension builds, the reader turns the pages impatiently, and then – the book ends. The reader is left hanging, his curiosity unsatisfied, and they slowly realize that they have wasted the better part of a day, or several days, on a story that has not made them any wiser.
The author promises a thrilling account of how the My Lai massacre was deliberately covered up by the American Army from the lowest to the highest level. However, he does not deliver this story. Instead, he offers a mediocre account of the atrocities and those who participated in them. To me, his work resembled a collection of character introductions from a fictional novel. He indeed describes the members of Charlie Company, their commanders, and the high ranking military officials vividly, but these descriptions comprise the bulk of his narrative and make its focus narrow, leaving no room for an analysis of what actually happened during and after My Lai.
Like many other authors, Hersh is fascinated with Calley in the sense that he pays him more attention than he deserves. Calley was not any more important than his inferiors who committed the atrocities together with him or under his orders. The only reason for Calley's being better known than any other member of C Company, 11th Brigade was that he was the only one who got convicted for a war crime over one hundred soldiers, and the American government, were guilty of. The author's hyperfixation with the second lieutenant draws attention away from the important fact that Calley was not a lone man gone crazy. The military strategy of the American government made the massacres in Vietnam possible.
Furthermore, the author demonstrates a strong Communist bias by denying the fact that the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese troops have committed atrocities in South Vietnam. This was not correct. That Hanoi had developed a strategy of terror on purpose has been proven by captured and declassified Communist documents. For instance, General Tran Van Quong, who planned and comanded the Viet Minh siege of Dien Bien Phu that won Vietnam the freedom from French oppression that they craved, has written one such document to the Party headquarters. The battle of Hue, during which the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong men murdered civilians by the thousands so that the locals kept finding bodies until 1969, is no less horrible than My Lai. To deny Communist atrocities the way Hersh does is to distort the truth. I do not think that a convincing argument against the cover-up of war crimes by the American military leaders cannot be made without excusing the other side.
COVER-UP is a misleading work that does not provide the insight that Hersh promises. The author expressed biased views that contradict facts from credible sources. This book is not worth the time. I do not recommend it.
I had high hopes for Seymour M. Hersh's work because he was an experienced reporter, but he did not meet even my lowest expectations. With the familiar pathos of journalists, Hersh writes in a mysterious tone that promises the reader a big revelation of something that they had not known before. The tension builds, the reader turns the pages impatiently, and then – the book ends. The reader is left hanging, his curiosity unsatisfied, and they slowly realize that they have wasted the better part of a day, or several days, on a story that has not made them any wiser.
The author promises a thrilling account of how the My Lai massacre was deliberately covered up by the American Army from the lowest to the highest level. However, he does not deliver this story. Instead, he offers a mediocre account of the atrocities and those who participated in them. To me, his work resembled a collection of character introductions from a fictional novel. He indeed describes the members of Charlie Company, their commanders, and the high ranking military officials vividly, but these descriptions comprise the bulk of his narrative and make its focus narrow, leaving no room for an analysis of what actually happened during and after My Lai.
Like many other authors, Hersh is fascinated with Calley in the sense that he pays him more attention than he deserves. Calley was not any more important than his inferiors who committed the atrocities together with him or under his orders. The only reason for Calley's being better known than any other member of C Company, 11th Brigade was that he was the only one who got convicted for a war crime over one hundred soldiers, and the American government, were guilty of. The author's hyperfixation with the second lieutenant draws attention away from the important fact that Calley was not a lone man gone crazy. The military strategy of the American government made the massacres in Vietnam possible.
Furthermore, the author demonstrates a strong Communist bias by denying the fact that the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese troops have committed atrocities in South Vietnam. This was not correct. That Hanoi had developed a strategy of terror on purpose has been proven by captured and declassified Communist documents. For instance, General Tran Van Quong, who planned and comanded the Viet Minh siege of Dien Bien Phu that won Vietnam the freedom from French oppression that they craved, has written one such document to the Party headquarters. The battle of Hue, during which the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong men murdered civilians by the thousands so that the locals kept finding bodies until 1969, is no less horrible than My Lai. To deny Communist atrocities the way Hersh does is to distort the truth. I do not think that a convincing argument against the cover-up of war crimes by the American military leaders cannot be made without excusing the other side.
COVER-UP is a misleading work that does not provide the insight that Hersh promises. The author expressed biased views that contradict facts from credible sources. This book is not worth the time. I do not recommend it.
October 27, 2025
Important
For a book that was published more than 50 years ago, Cover Up sounds completely modern in its tone. We will always need work like this. Without it, we'd have much worse than Trump now. I only hope that Hersh's heirs, now that he is 88, are out there now, documenting ICE's war against Americans in our own streets, to make an indelible record for future generations.
For a book that was published more than 50 years ago, Cover Up sounds completely modern in its tone. We will always need work like this. Without it, we'd have much worse than Trump now. I only hope that Hersh's heirs, now that he is 88, are out there now, documenting ICE's war against Americans in our own streets, to make an indelible record for future generations.
April 10, 2023
An excellent account of the atrocities in Sơn Mỹ village in Quảng Ngãi Province on 16 March 1968 carried out by the US occupying force in South Vietnam and the American attempts to cover up the mass murder. It is truly harrowing. Well reserached, and very well written.
Some people may accuse me of being biased. Like a useful idiot on this site who gave this book a one-star review with the regular arguments made by America-hugging apologists - but what about North Vietnamese atrocities! - along with missing the fact that this book was published in 1972 and totally misrepresenting (or possibly not comprehending) Hersh's writings about Calley.
As for the possible accusation that I'm biased, my reply is: You're goddamn right I am. Just as perhaps a Jewish person might be biased about a book about the Holocaust. My partner's Vietnamese and we have traveled the country quite extensively, from North to South.
Among many other places, I have been to Mỹ Lai. Imagining more than 500 corpses - mainly women, children and elderly - in this tiny place, about 100 of them in a ditch, murdered like animals, is gut wrenching.
The US military truly is no better than the Nazis on the Eastern front. Both regarded the people living under their occupation as sub-human scum to be raped, brutalized and murdered at their pleasure. Something which is made abundantly clear in Nick Turse's marvellous book Kill Anthing That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam.
Some people may accuse me of being biased. Like a useful idiot on this site who gave this book a one-star review with the regular arguments made by America-hugging apologists - but what about North Vietnamese atrocities! - along with missing the fact that this book was published in 1972 and totally misrepresenting (or possibly not comprehending) Hersh's writings about Calley.
As for the possible accusation that I'm biased, my reply is: You're goddamn right I am. Just as perhaps a Jewish person might be biased about a book about the Holocaust. My partner's Vietnamese and we have traveled the country quite extensively, from North to South.
Among many other places, I have been to Mỹ Lai. Imagining more than 500 corpses - mainly women, children and elderly - in this tiny place, about 100 of them in a ditch, murdered like animals, is gut wrenching.
The US military truly is no better than the Nazis on the Eastern front. Both regarded the people living under their occupation as sub-human scum to be raped, brutalized and murdered at their pleasure. Something which is made abundantly clear in Nick Turse's marvellous book Kill Anthing That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam.
March 10, 2022
Detailed but, for me, a bit too dry and flat.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews