280 a short history of the united states
the negotiations in Paris. By this time it was estimated that millions
had taken part in massive antiwar demonstrations.
Then, on November 17 , 1969 , Seymour Hersh reported in the New
York Times that American troops had been responsible for the massacre
of more than 100 South Vietnamese civilians—women, children, and
the elderly—in the village of My Lai in Quang Ngai province in
March 1968. A horrified nation demanded an accounting. Several sol-
diers, among them Lieutenant William Calley, were court- martialed.
In March 1971 Calley was convicted of premeditated murder of at least
twenty-two Vietnamese citizens and sentenced to life imprisonment.
But his sentence was later reduced, and he was released after serving
only three and a half years. His commanding officer, Captain Ernest
Medina, whom Calley accused of ordering him to kill the civilians,
was also tried but found not guilty.
In an effort to clear out communist sanctuaries along the Cambo-
dian border with South Vietnam, Nixon authorized American troops
to invade and destroy these sanctuaries on April 30 , 1970. Then, in late
December 1970 , Congress repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and
the President signed it on January 31 , 1971.
This incursion into Cambodia, along with the expansion of Ameri-
can involvement in a war in Laos, the country that bordered Cambodia
on the north, produced further demonstrations on college campuses.
One such demonstration, at Kent State in Ohio, resulted in the killing of
four students who were shot to death by National Guardsmen on May 4 ,
1970. The picture of a terrified, screaming young woman leaning over
the body of one of these students and pleading for an answer deeply af-
fected the nation. Two more students were killed by state police at Jack-
son State College in Mississippi on May 14. Then, on July 1 , 1970 , the
New York Times published the Pentagon Papers. These were classifi ed
documents that detailed decisions leading to the United States’ involve-
ment in Vietnam. The Times had obtained them from Daniel Ellsberg,
a former Defense Department employee, and their publication further
eroded confidence in the war and the administration’s handling of it. In
addition, the Pentagon Papers made the administration extremely para-
noid about information being leaked to the media. The administration
became more secretive and more determined to spy on the activities of
citizens where leaks were suspected.