American Scandal - The Massacre at My Lai | Interview | Rules of Engagement: How My Lai Changed the US Military | 5

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

On March 16, 1968, American soldiers carried out what remains one of the most brutal war crimes in U.S. history. Over the course of a single morning, they killed between 300 and 500 Vietnamese civilians. The My Lai Massacre stands as a lasting stain on the U.S. military’s legacy, but one that, according to Fred Borch, has also led to important reforms. Borch is a retired Army lawyer and former regimental historian for the Judge Advocate General Corps. He joins Lindsay to discuss the legacy of My Lai, the failures that made it possible, and what’s changed in the decades since.Be the first to know about Wondery’s newest podcasts, curated recommendations, and more! Sign up now at https://wondery.fm/wonderynewsletterListen to American Scandal on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season. Unlock exclusive early access by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial today by visiting wondery.com/links/american-scandal/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Want to get more from American Scandal? Subscribe to Wondry Plus for early access to new episodes, add free listening, and exclusive content you can't find anywhere else. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. From Wondery, I'm Lindsay Graham, and this is American Scandal. On March 16, 1968, American soldiers entered the Vietnamese hamlet of Mi Lai. What followed was one of the most horrifying war crimes in U.S. history. Hundreds of unarmed civilians, men, women, and children.

were gunned down in cold blood, some were raped. But instead of confronting this atrocity, military leaders tried to bury it, and for more than a year, they succeeded. When the truth finally came to light, it shocked the world and raised a disturbing question, how could the United States Army allow something like this to happen? And yet, despite the fallout, only one man was convicted of a crime while dozens more went free. My guest today is Fred Bork, a retired Army lawyer and regimental historian of the Judge Advocate General Corps. He's written extensively about how Mili shaped military justice, and today we'll explore how the U.S. military confronted the legacy of this massacre and whether the lessons it claimed

to learn still hold up more than 50 years later. Our conversation is next. Build a more secure, resilient self and strengthen your relationships. For 15 years, mental health professionals at the Center for 15 years, mental health professionals at the Center for interpersonal relationships have offered psychological treatment and assessment services to help you, your couple, your adolescent, and your family. Psychotherapy starts at $75 per session. You don't have to live with depression, anxiety, or difficulties in your relationships.

We'll offer an initial session online or in person in Toronto at 790 Bay Street. Visit cfir.ca. What if I told you that the crime of the century is happening right now? From coast to coast, people are fleeing flames, wind, and water. Nature is telling us, I can't take this anymore. These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet. Stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups, and the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it.

This is Lawless Planet. Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. Fred Bork, welcome to American Scandal. Happy to be here. So you have said that Mili nearly wrecked the U.S. Army. What did you mean by that? Well, I think if you put it in the context of the time, the country was increasingly opposed to the war in Vietnam.

And if you remember your history, the Tet Offensive of January 1968 was a real shock to Americans. Walter Cronkide on CBS News was telling Americans that 500 soldiers had been killed in that week alone in the Vietnam War. And Americans had been told by Lyndon Bates Johnson and the Pentagon that we were winning the war, but it looked as if we were, in fact, losing the war.

So by the time the American people learn about, what happened at Milai, this horrendous war crime, there was so much anti-war feeling, which it translated into anti-army feeling that morale in the army just hit rock bottom, particularly after photographs in color of the murders at Mili were published in Life magazine. This was an unbelievable shock to Americans. They'd never seen anything like this before. And in those days, as you probably know, or your listeners know, Life magazine was in everybody's household. So when I say Mili nearly wrecked the army, I'm saying that the war crime was so shocking that it really hurt the reputation of the army among the American people.

So we know that there were many failures that led to the Mili massacre. Poor training and leadership, low morale, flawed intelligence, and of course racism. What would you say are the most critical of these factors? Well, certainly the number one factor is poor leadership, as epitomized by William Callie, who was a substandard leader, should have never been commissioned as an officer. But again, at the time, we were so short of smart young men, in this case, to be leaders, that Callie was commissioned. And I think that the real failure at Milai, sure, there were many. was leadership. A better leader would have made sure that this war crime had not occurred because

you cannot, you may not, you should not kill unarmed and unresisting civilians. But Cali was the one who ordered his men to open fire and to kill them. So I suppose we have to delve into what the rules of engagement are, what orders are legal to follow or not. At the time of Milai, what were the frameworks that governed how U.S. soldiers were supposed to behave in combat situations. And I guess, how did the Army distinguish between a war crime and a lawful order? Well, during the Vietnam War, the law that applied was the Geneva Conventions of 1949. And those had been in effect since after World War II. And certainly, we taught soldiers that they needed to make sure they only targeted the enemy

don't harm civilians. If you have to launch an attack, try to reduce collateral damage, that is, injury to unarmed civilians. But that was pretty much all there was. Today, we have what we call rules of engagement. And those are the commander's rules for how force may be used. We didn't have that back during the Vietnam era, and consequently, I think one of the problems at Mili is that soldiers really weren't sure how they should use force. Now, if we're talking about war crimes, some war crimes are pretty easy to figure out. You can't kill prisoners of war. You shouldn't be shooting at unarmed or unresisting civilians. And then if we're talking about lawful orders, well, if a lieutenant ordered a soldier to kill a prisoner of war, every soldier should know that

that's an illegal order. But what about an order to shoot at a Vietnamese civilian who's taken off running as soon as she sees you in a rice paddy? Is that a lawful order? Is that person running away an enemy or a civilian? So I think these are more complicated issues, particularly in Vietnam. And let me also add that during this era, we also had what we called free fire zones. And the idea was that you would clear a particular geographic area of the enemy, or so you said, and then you told your soldiers you may fire on anyone who's in that area because it's a free fire zone. You can assume that anyone who's there is, in fact, the enemy. This was a big mistake because often you'd end up killing civilians who either didn't realize they were in a free fire zone or simply had bad luck to be there.

But the bottom line is we did have the Geneva Conventions, but other than some rudimentary classes, we didn't do much in the way of training or education on obeying only lawful orders. And of course, in Vietnam, as you hint, the situation was difficult. The Viet Cong, they often blended in with the civilian population. They didn't wear uniforms. You mentioned these free fire zones, but how else did the U.S. Army prepare for the reality of guerrilla warfare? The answer is not very well at all. And in fact, this is a very frustrating situation for any American soldier, because unlike World War II, where the enemy wore a uniform or the Korean War, as you say, there's no way to really tell a, who the enemy is, at least when you're talking about the Viet Cong.

The North Vietnamese, a professional armed force, they wore uniforms. But if you're talking about combatants in South Vietnam, the Viet Cong are wearing black pajamas and their farmers by day and their guerrillas by night. So it's almost impossible for a soldier to know, an American soldier to know, if this military age Vietnamese man is actually Viet Cong. And I think as a general rule, although we didn't talk about it at the time, the issue would be, is the person demonstrating some hostile intent? If you saw a farmer carrying a weapon, an AK-47, well, you might assume that that person

is the enemy. But I've seen more than a few cases where a young Vietnamese male with a young Vietnamese male would simply start running away. And the conclusion by the Americans was, well, only the enemy would run away, so let's open fire. And the result was, of course, not good because you're not really sure that you're engaging the enemy. So to go back to this free fire zone, this was one of the solutions they came up with. They said, well, it's too hard to identify whether or not someone's the enemy. So let's just say we're going to have this geographic area and we're going to tell the Vietnamese

stay out of here or don't be out after a particular curfew. And then if we see somebody, we can assume that's the enemy. So that was one way to fix it, which I think in retrospect was a big mistake. In thinking about conflicts subsequent to Vietnam, they often resemble Vietnam more than they do World War II. I'm thinking of our engagements in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Has the military gotten any better? at distinguishing between civilians and the enemy?

Well, of course, you are exactly right. We have not had this sort of nation-on-nation conflict, really since the Korean War. All right, you could certainly include the North Vietnamese. But in Afghanistan, for example, how were you able to distinguish between an Afghan civilian who's simply going about his or her business and the Taliban or al-Qaeda? And so what the American military has done is said, okay, we're going to have rules of engagement, and one of the rules would be that you may not engage, say, in this case, an Afghan, unless that Afghan shows some sort of hostile intent. And the hostile intent would be carrying a weapon, aiming that weapon at you, or otherwise indicating that he was a combatant. So the answer is, yes, we are doing better, but it's still difficult if you're in that situation where the enemy, if you want to call him that, doesn't follow the same rules that we do,

which means doesn't wear a uniform or have insignia of rank or any of these sort of things. So we are doing better, but it's still very difficult. And like anything, Lindsay, war is messy. people make mistakes, accidents happen. And so even if you think someone's showing hostile intent and you engage them, well, maybe you make a mistake. It's just hard to know. So it sounds like these rules of engagement are there to assist the Army and the individual soldiers to decide what is proper conduct in a conflict zone. And this is probably one of the central questions. What orders can soldiers disobey? What does military law say about that? In general, military law or the law of armed conflict says that you can only use force if it's required by military necessity, which means that you need to take the action to defeat the enemy

quickly and efficiently. That's the first principle. And then the second principle we talk about, and this is what we tell soldiers, is distinction. And that is you're always allowed to move precisely, if you want to say, against enemy elements, but you can't harm the innocent. You can't harm civilians. Now, we know that sometimes in attacking the enemy, civilians are harmed. And so the third principle that we tell soldiers is, whatever you're doing, it has to be proportional. So civilians lawfully may be killed or injured, but the injury has to be proportional to the need to destroy the enemy. Now this, of course, is a very sticky wicket because what I may think is proportional may not be what someone else thinks is proportional. And then the last principle we

always talk about it is you can't use a weapon or do something that causes unnecessary suffering. So, for example, that's why we don't allow the use of poison or chemical weapons. And so those are the four things that we tell soldiers, and these rules of engagement are all built around that, with the key one being you distinguish between the enemy and civilians by looking for hostile intent, that is, assuming the enemy is not wearing a uniform. So would you run down these rules then in Cali's case? So in Cali's case, the intelligence that they got on March 16, 1968, was that they were going into the village of Milai to clear out a very, very sophisticated

Viet Cong battalion that had been there for years and years. So at least based on the intelligence, it was militarily necessary for Cali's platoon to go into Mili. The problem was, as probably your listeners know, is the military intelligence was just bad. There were no Viet Cong in the village. The only people who were at Mili were unarmed and unresisting civilians. And so Callie and his men violated the principle of distinction because there were no enemy there to engage, because they were unarmed and unresisting. There were no military age males. They were just innocent civilians.

And then, of course, certainly wasn't proportional because you had no military reason to be in the village once you found out the enemy wasn't there. Unnecessary suffering doesn't really apply because they weren't using an illegal weapon of any way. But I would say the big problem is they violated the principle of distinction, which is you can only attack enemy elements, but you can't harm the innocent. So if one of these soldiers, and I feel for them greatly, it's a horrible situation. and very stressful all around. But what if they were cognizant of these principles, realized that war crimes were happening around them, and then decided to act?

What could they have done? How do you report a war crime in 1968 U.S. Army? Well, in fact, the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, published regulations that required all American soldiers to report war crimes. that they saw committed by an enemy, and also to report war crimes that they saw committed by Americans. Now, just because there's a regulation out there and a requirement to do this, doesn't mean it's going to be easy to do. And I think that part of the problem is that

it's very, very difficult for a soldier to decide to disobey an order. As a general rule, we want unquestioning and immediate obedience to orders. We cannot have soldiers questioning the officer's orders or a non-commissioned officer's orders. Because you can't fight a war and win a war if there's a discussion about whether or not I'm going to follow your order. The problem, of course, is that what do you do when you get a clearly illegal order? So we tell soldiers that if you get an illegal order, you must not follow it. But we also tell soldiers you disobey an order at your own risk. And if it turns out that you were wrong in refusing to follow this order, well, then maybe you will have to pay some sort of a price.

So I think the problem here is that sometimes determining what's unlawful is difficult. How hard is it to kill a planet? Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere. When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene. Are we really safe? Is our water safe? You destroyed our time. And crimes like that, they don't just happen. We call things accidents. There is no accident.

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Join Wondery Plus right now. One of the people who in the moment did decide that something untoward or worse was going on was Hugh Thompson, but he was vilified for speaking out. Talk about the backlash that he and others who thought about speaking out faced. Well, I think Hugh Thompson is the real hero of Mili. In fact, some credit Hugh and Hugh's actions as the helicopter pilot that day for really stopping the massacre, although by that time as many as 500 had been killed, 350 to 500. But yes, Hugh Thompson, who was flying in a helicopter over Milai, began to see bodies, dead bodies of civilians on the ground. And he said, whoa, what's going on here? This looks like some killing is out of control. He lands his helicopter.

He actually has a discussion with Cali, who says, mind your own business, get out of here. And at one point, he actually tells his gun crew in the helicopter, if you see Callie's platoon or second platoon, if they start pursuing some of these civilians, I'm telling you to open fire. I mean, this was shocking that an American pilot would tell his crew to open fire on other Americans. But you're exactly right. He reports it to his chain of command, the brigade commander, Colonel Henderson, and he also tells other people what he's seen. And nothing is done because there's a cover up. And you're right, he is vilified. He gets death threats. He suffers a lot. And this is really not that unusual. Sometimes you make a hard decision. It's the right decision and others don't like it. There were many people who after Cali was convicted, insisted that Cali really was a hero and that we should never have prosecuted him.

So I think this is just the flip side of what Hugh Thompson faced. Yeah, I think it was a backlash. It was wrong. But sometimes this happens if you were a whistleblower, if you want to call it like that. Now, at the time, we're not talking about whistleblowing here because this is the Army. But I think, you know, Thompson was willing to stand up for the courage of his convictions. And he did save many lives, but he did pay for it personally because of people who criticized him for what he did. If I can dig in a little there, you say it's not whistleblowing because this is the army.

Does the army not have any whistleblower protections in place? Well, we certainly do now. But at the time in 1968, I don't think there really was any sort of whistleblower. kind of protection. I mean, certainly, Thompson spoke up. I think he notified the chaplain. He notified the chain of command, but he didn't really get any sort of protection.

So it's not the sophisticated sort of whistleblower protections that we have in the government today. Now, as you dig into this story a bit, something might occur to you that it's almost remarkable that we know about this story, given that the backlash of potential witnesses, given the code of silence within the army, the incentives to keep the truth hidden. Should we be surprised that this incident ultimately came out at all?

Well, I think so because the other hero is a guy by the name of Ron Ridenauer. The murders at Mili happened in March of 1968. And about a year later, Ron Ridenauer, who was not at Mili and was not with Callie's unit, Ron Ridenauer began to hear people who had been there talking about this. And Ridenauer was shocked. He couldn't believe that this sort of thing had happened. Now, this is all back in the U.S. now. These guys are all out of Vietnam. They've all been discharged. And Ridenauer decides that he's going to write some letters. So you've got to think back to the 60s, 1969, if you wanted to let the government know about something bad, about all. you could do, well, you could send a telegram, or you could write a letter. No one's going to answer your phone call. So Ridenauer began to write letters, and he wrote at least 25 letters in which he explained that he'd heard about this massacre at Mili, these killings at Mili, and one of Ridenauer's letters reached General Westmoreland, who was then the chief

of staff of the army. And Westmoreland turned over the letter to the Army. IG who began investigating it. So yes, there had been a very sophisticated cover-up for more than a year at the highest levels, including the entire division staff. And yeah, I think you can say if it hadn't been for Ryan Ridenhauer's letter writing, we might never known about this. Certainly the South Vietnamese were not going to do anything about it because their view was that probably the people at Milai were Viet Cong sympathizers anyway, and why do we want to do anything about this? So, yeah, I think if it hadn't been for Ron Ridenauer, we wouldn't know about it. After World War II, we saw increasing interest in psychology to try to discover why

ordinary people can commit or allow terrible acts probably in a response to the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. The Milgram experiment is one of the most famous. What role of Do you think this bystander effect or the group think that these experiments pointed to played in what happened at Meilai? There's a very famous series of articles or a book by Hannah Arendt who talks about the banality of evil and how people who ordinarily were just normal men and women ended up doing really evil things, and maybe that's a product of group think. I think that there are a couple of explanations here about what happened at Milai. The first one would be, I think most of the soldiers kept quiet maybe because they were ashamed of what they did.

Or maybe they kept quiet because they didn't want to incriminate themselves. Or maybe they kept quiet because they thought they did nothing wrong. And one of the big problems, I think, is that, and we've done this in every single war and every single army does this. And that is you tend to dehumanize the enemy, and you look at the enemy and you talk about the enemy as not being like you. And consequently, then, it's easier to attack the enemy and kill the enemy. And so I think part of the problem at Milai is that at least for some of these soldiers, okay, well, maybe some civilians were killed, but they're sort of all bad.

They're not like us. They don't look like us. and so that makes the behavior easier. Has the military looked into this? Sure. And how do we prevent it? Well, again, one of the reasons, and we'll talk about this later, is we have decided that one way to prevent these war crimes is to put lawyers actually in combat operations so they can be eyes and ears and make sure that people are obeying the law. But I think to your original question about how people can commit and allow terrible I think these are probably the best explanations. You mentioned the dehumanization of the Vietnamese as a factor here, and it's been pointed to over and over again by historians and investigators, including in the Peers Commission. How has the military perhaps reckoned with this aspect of its history and it's the necessity of making the enemy the enemy? Well, I think this is certainly a key problem. Dehumanization is always part of war. In World War II, we called the Germans, the crowds. We called the Japanese the Nips or the Japs. In Vietnam, we called the enemy the gooks.

All this is racism. It's dehumanization. But you can easily see that this dehumanization also makes it easier for someone to commit a war crime because you end up not treating people, the enemy, the way really you should be treated. So I think that, yes, dehumanization. is always part of the war, and you are never going to see it disappear, I think. At least where you're talking about someone actually has to close with the enemy in combat and take the person out. So example, one other thing, you know, we don't talk about in the army about killing people. We talk about neutralizing the enemy, right? I mean, you've heard some of these semantics. And that's all part of human psychology of making it easier to do what really

otherwise isn't allowed. You're not allowed to kill people, but you are if you're in the army and you're doing it as part of national policy. And let's turn to the punishments or lack thereof following Eli. Many soldiers and officers were charged with either war crimes or part of the cover-up, but only William Cali was actually convicted. You mentioned he was a terrible leader, but do you think he was also a scapegoat? Well, I don't think he was a scapegoat because in the ancient religions, and I think this actually comes out of Judaism, is the scapegoat was an innocent animal that's blamed for everybody else's sins and is therefore at sacrifice.

So Callie's not a scapegoat because he wasn't innocent. He's a murderer, and he was convicted of killing 25, 30, 50 people at Milai. Now, if your question really is, yeah, but weren't other people guilty and the Army failed to prosecute them, the answer is yes, we did prosecute some others. Captain Medina, the company commander was prosecuted. Colonel Henderson, the brigade commander was prosecuted. They were found not guilty, and they were found not guilty because the prosecutor messed up the cases. They didn't charge, in my opinion, the right things. But I think ultimately, sad to say, the Army just wanted to get the whole sordid mess behind it and move on. And so I think that it was a

failure. The Army should have prosecuted, could have prosecuted others, but it didn't. You know, the interesting thing is that the Kelly case, which was prosecuted at Fort Benning in Georgia, even though the evidence was open and shut, the jury was actually out on the merits to decide guilt over 70 hours, 70 hours, which is incredible. But they did find him guilty. They did sentence him to life in prison. He never really served much time. But at least one case was prosecuted. So is it fair to say that, in your opinion, you do not think that justice was served? Well, I think that there were others whose actions at Mili should have been prosecuted at a court-martial, and they weren't. So I think I'd probably conclude that other than Cali,

this is not really something that we should be proud of, that justice was probably not done. Well, let's talk about the organization you served in for many years, the JAG Corps. Talk about its history, its role. What does JAG even stand for? Well, so from the very beginning of the American Army, and you probably know this year, is the 250th anniversary of the Army. Our Army started in June 1775. So almost from the beginning, there have been lawyers in the Army. George Washington, the commander of the Continental Army, wanted a judge advocate. He wanted a lawyer to advise him mostly on courts marshal in the early days of the revolution. And so on July 29th, 1775, Congress appointed the first judge advocate general, which is the top lawyer in the army. And we've had a legal core pretty much since that time. For many, many years, it was really all about prosecuting and defending soldiers at courts marshal. But after Mili, and I think this is really, really important,

the leaders of the JAG Corps and the Army, and I think also the other JAG Corps in the Navy and in the Air Force, recognized that if we were going to prevent another mili, we had to have lawyers more engaged in military operations. So people sometimes are surprised to hear this. but no one in World War II said before launching an operation, hey, let's check with the lawyers to see if this is legal. Certainly, no lawyer advised Harry Truman as to whether or not it was legal to drop the atomic bomb in August of 1945. But after Mili, the Army Jag Corps said, hey, if we're going to prevent another war crime, we're going to have to have lawyers with commanders on military operations.

So really since the mid-70s and the 80s, anytime a commander goes to war, lawyers go with him or her. And that's really the JAG Corps' reason for being now is to provide legal advice to commanders on military operations around the clock, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I'd like you to detail a little more of the history

of the evolving use of law in the Army, especially perhaps after Operation Urgent Fury. So you've got the invasion of Grenada in October of 1983, and before that time, lawyers were involved in military operations, but they were really just looking at war plans. So the Army and the other services have a war plan for everything. I mean, if anything you could think of, some sort of war plan out there. So is there a war plan for the invasion of, you know, pick your country? Yes, we've got it. And lawyers were looking at these war plans. But what happened in Grenada in October of 1983 was the JAG Corps sort of accidentally had a lawyer on the ground in Grenada and all of a sudden a lot of questions came up that no one had ever thought up.

For example, the Marxist government in Grenada had some Cuban officers and Cuban soldiers on the island providing military advice to the Grenadian People's Army. And as troopers from the 82nd Airborne Division out of Fort Bragg began to encounter these Cubans and took them into custody, the question was, hey, are these Cubans prisoners of war? Are we at war with Cuba? what sort of legal status do these people have? And it was not just Cubans. The Cold War was on. And so there were other Soviet-style soldiers who were there as well, I think, from some of the Warsaw Pact nations. So all of a sudden, this was a wake-up call that you can't just be looking at war plans. If you're going to be relevant, you actually have to have your lawyers there on the ground with commanders. There were all sorts of of questions that came up. There were American students on the island of Grenada attending medical school. They wanted to go home. And one of the questions was, can we put these

civilian students on military aircraft and fly them home? As a general rule, you can't just get on a military plane. So Grenada, I think, as you raise the issue, is really the wake-up call, a recognition that we've got not only got to be involved in planning, but you actually have to be there with the commander to be able to answer questions in a timely fashion. Got to give timely advice, relevant advice, good advice. That's really the lesson of Grenada. Given the many failures that contributed to Mili, there are obviously plenty of lessons to take away. But you've been an Army lawyer for 25 years before becoming a full-time military historian. So what for you are the most significant lessons of Mili, and have they been addressed?

Well, I think I always tell people, and I certainly always tell my students, that every Army commits war crimes. It doesn't make any difference. Who you are, there's always going to be some soldier in an army who is going to commit a war crime. What you have to make sure is not the issue is that you have some institutional flaw or institutional failure or institutional shortcoming that's allowing these war crimes to occur. So I think the lesson for Milai is it's a horrific war crime. maybe we can't commit or prevent war crimes, but we have to prevent something from mili ever happening again, where you have between 350 and 500 innocent, unarmed, unresisting

civilians kill. So the first lesson has to be you've got to train and educate your soldiers on their obligations and responsibilities under the law of war. And you can't just do it at basic training. You've got to do it every year. Every time you deploy on a military operation, you've got to get your lawyers in there to train and educate soldiers on their obligations and responsibilities. And then you have to have lawyers involved 24 hours a day, seven days a week,

to advise on the treatment of detainees, the lawfulness of targeting, whether or not it's appropriate use of force. Are these the right rules of engagement? So I think those are the lessons. And we've been successful. We have never had another situation like Mili happen again. So I think that the military has done a good job. And in fact, sometimes people find this hard to believe.

But commanders actually, in my opinion, appreciate having lawyers there to help them. Because lawyers are rarely going to say, you can't do this. A lawyer is going to try to find a solution that will be lawful where you're complying with the law of armed conflict. Now, while we may not have ever had a mili since, there have been other famous instances of war crimes committed by American soldiers in one notable case, that of Clint Lawrence. He and two others were pardoned by President Trump in 2019. What do you make of these cases? Well, whenever I'm asked about the Laurent's case or Matt Goldstein or Eddie Gallagher, the bottom line for me is that they were prosecuted.

And in fact, in the Lawrence case, the men who served under Lawrence had no hesitation in testifying against him at trial. And he was convicted. Matt Goldstein admitted when he had an interview at the Central Intelligence Agency that he had assassinated. And that's actually Goldstein's word. assassination that he had killed a suspected Taliban bomb maker. And of course, Eddie Gallagher was also prosecuted and convicted. I also tell people the president of the United States, President Trump,

as the commander-in-chief, has the absolute authority as our commander to pardon these men. And President Trump did it because he thought it was the right thing to do. I don't think that's particularly important to me. What's important to me is that the cases were prosecuted. And Matt Goldstein's never went to trial, but Gallagher and Lawrence did. And I think you prosecute these cases, Lindsay, to deter others from committing these sort of war crimes. Continuing to look forward to the future of military conflict, we can look to Ukraine and see that armed conflict is evolving. And I wonder if there's a danger in further dehumanization if we move inevitably towards the use of drones and other technology. Do you think this

conflict at a distance would necessitate new or updated rules of engagement? Well, I think that what is happening in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia has really turned warfare upside down. I'm not sure that the American public understands that the unbelievable use of unmanned aerial vehicles of drones is really something absolutely incredible, because if you swarm in with 500 drones, how are you going to shoot them all down? We're not really ready here in America to face this sort of technology. So I think that, yes, more and more, I think you're going to begin to hear, commentators say that the Ukraine-Russia war really is the war of the future, particularly because

you can build these drones for about $500 a piece, and they're able to really take the war to the enemy in a way it couldn't be done before. Now, as far as your question about dehumanization, I think that this is maybe one of the problems with technology. If we're talking about 500 years ago, where in order to kill the enemy, I actually had to get up to the enemy and actually kill that person face to face, well, that's a big change from the way things are done today, where a lot of the technology allows us to neutralize or defeat the enemy without ever seeing him or her. And I think drones, if anything, probably are going to make this even more pronounced. and that is the technology takes you away from the face-to-face horrors of war, and without that face-to-face horror of war, I think it gets easier to kill.

So, yes, I think that this may, in fact, make it easier. Maybe it will promote dehumanization. It's hard to say. But I do think that I'm a big believer as a professional historian, that it's the law of unintended consequences that you always have to be looking out for. And I think what's happening in Ukraine and Russia now is really so. We don't really have all the facts yet, and I don't want to drone on here, but the estimates are that a million Russians have been killed and injured, and probably 400,000 Ukrainians killed or injured in this war. These numbers are absolutely

incredible when you consider Lindsay that we had 58,000 Americans killed in Vietnam, and we consider Vietnam to be a pretty bad event. So I think that the drone technology is probably going to mean that we'll see even more horrific cases like this. Well, Fred Bork, thank you so much for talking to me today on American Scandal. You are very welcome, Lindsay. I hope it was helpful. That was my conversation with historian and lawyer Fred Borg. He served on active duty as an army lawyer for 25 years before retiring as a colonel. He then became the regimental historian for the Judge Advocate General Corps and served as a professor of its legal center in school in Charlottesville, Virginia.

From Wondery, this is episode five of the Massacre Agnilai for American Scandal. In our next series, during the early years of the 20th century, the United States came face to face with an ancient threat of black death. When the bubonic plague hit San Francisco in 1900, the lives of millions were at risk. A brilliant young bacteriologist from the East Coast was tasked with stopping the disease, but he would soon discover that he was not just battling the plague, but an alliance of politicians and businessmen more concerned with their profits than the health of the nation. If you're enjoying American scandal, you can unlock exclusive seasons on Wondery Plus.

Binge new season first and listen completely ad-free when you join Wondery Plus in the Wondry app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a survey at Wondry.com slash survey. American Scandal is hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham for Airship. Audio editing and sound design by Molly Bond. Music by Thrum. This episode was produced by John Lee, managing producer Emily Burke, development by

Stephanie Chens, senior producer Andy Beckerman, executive producers, are William Simpson for airship, and Jenny Lauer Beckman, Marshall Louis, Erin O'Flaherty for Wondering.