Criminal Justice

June 18, 1972

The Watergate Story

Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, The Watergate Story. The Washington Post, 18 June 1972 – 9 August 1974.

“”Five Held in Plot to Bug Democratic Offices Here,” said the headline at the bottom of page one in the Washington Post on Sunday, June 18, 1972. The story reported that a team of burglars had been arrested inside the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate office complex in Washington. So began the chain of events that would convulse Washington for two years, lead to the first resignation of a U.S. president and change American politics forever.”

January 22, 1972

Coverup–I: The Army’s Investigation of the Son My Massacres of South Vietnamese Civilians by U.S. Troops on March 16, 1968

Seymour M. Hersh, Coverup-I: The Army’s Investigation of the Son My Massacres of South Vietnamese Civilians by U.S. Troops on March 16, 1968. The New Yorker, 22 January 1972. “This is the first of two articles on the Army’s investigation of the Son My massacres.” “Early on March 16, 1968, a company of soldiers in the United States Army’s Americal Division were dropped in by helicopter for an assault against a hamlet known as My Lai 4, in the bitterly contested province of Quang Ngai, on the northeastern coast of South Vietnam. A hundred G.I.s and officers stormed the hamlet in military-textbook style, advancing by platoons; the troops expected to engage the Vietcong Local Force 48th Battalion—one of the enemy’s most successful units—but instead they found women, children, and old men, many of them still cooking their breakfast rice over outdoor fires. During the next few hours, the civilians were murdered. Many were rounded up in small groups and shot, others were flung into a drainage ditch at one edge of the hamlet and shot, and many more were shot at random in or near their homes. Some of the younger women and girls were raped and then murdered. After the shootings, the G.I.s systematically burned each home, destroyed the livestock and food, and fouled the area’s drinking supplies. None of this was officially told by Charlie Company to its task-force headquarters; instead, a claim that a hundred and twenty-eight Vietcong were killed and three weapons were captured eventually emerged from the task force and worked its way up to the highest American headquarters, in Saigon. There it was reported to the world’s press as a significant victory.”

November 13, 1969

The My Lai Massacre in Vietnam on 16 March 1968

Seymour Hersh, The My Lai Massacre: An Atrocity Is Uncovered: November 1969. St. Louis Post-Dispatch (via pierretristam.com), 13 November 1969. “The Army is completing an investigation [November 1969] of charges that [William Calley] deliberately murdered at least 109 Vietnamese civilians in a search-and- destroy mission in March 1968 in a Viet Cong stronghold known as “Pinkville.” Calley has formally been charged with six specifications of mass murder. Each specification cites a number of dead, adding up to the 109 total, and charges that Calley did ‘with premeditation murder… Oriental human beings, whose names and sex are unknown, by shooting them with a rifle.'”Hersh’s stories were published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on 13, 20 and 25 November 1969, and he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for International Reporting “for his exclusive disclosure of the Vietnam War tragedy at the hamlet of My Lai.”

March 29, 1969

Ron Ridenhour’s letter (29 March 1969) that began My Lai investigation

Ron Ridenhour, Ron Ridenhour’s letter to Congress and the Pentagon about the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. 29 March 1969. “In 1969, Vietnam veteran Ron Ridenhour wrote a letter to Congress and the Pentagon describing the horrific events at My Lai–the infamous massacre of the Vietnam War–bringing the scandal to the attention of the American public and the world.”

October 5, 1936

The Harvest Gypsies: Migrant Agriculture Laborers in California in the 1930s

John Steinbeck, The Harvest Gypsies. San Francisco News, 5-12 October 1936. PBS, Need to Know, 1 March 2013: “Before he wrote his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck was commissioned by The San Francisco News to write a series of articles on the migrant laborers of the Salinas Valley. The result, ‘The Harvest Gypsies” (1936) were published consecutively from October 5 to October 12, 1936. In 1938 the Simon J. Lubin Society published The Harvest Gypsies, with an added eighth chapter, in pamphlet form under the title, Their Blood is Strong. Steinbeck’s reportage is stark. The images seen in the Farm Security Administration’s photos bear out his every word.”

January 15, 1935

Two Thousand Dying on a Job: Silicosis deaths resulting from working on the Hawks Mountain Tunnel Project in West Virginia in the early 1930s

Bernard Allen, Two Thousand Dying on a Job. New Masses, 15 January 1935. “Two thousand workmen, according to the estimated figures of the contractors, were employed for over a period of two years [in the early 1930s] in drilling a three and three-quarter mile tunnel under a mountain from Gauley’s Junction to Hawk’s Nest in Fayette County, West Virginia. The rock through which these men bored was sandstone of a high silica content (in tunnel number one it ran from 97 percent pure silica to as high as 99.4 percent) and the contracting company neglected to provide any safety devices.”

November 1, 1909

The Daughters of the Poor: A Plain Story of the Development of New York City as a Leading Center of the White Slave Trade of the World, Under Tammany Hall

George Kibbe Turner, The Daughters of the Poor: A Plain Story of the Development of New York City as a Leading Center of the White Slave Trade of the World, Under Tammany Hall. McClure’s, November 1909.

September 1, 1908

The Race War in the North: White Mob Violence Against Blacks in Springfield, Illinois in 1908

William English Walling, The Race War in the North: White Mob Violence Against Blacks in Springfield, Illinois in 1908. The Independent, September 1908. Spartacus Educational: “In August, 1908, Walling and his wife witnessed the Springfield Riot in Illinois, where a white mob attacked local African Americans. During the riot two were lynched, six killed, and over 2,000 African Americans were forced to leave the city. In an article entitled, The Race War in the North, that he wrote for The Independent about the riot, Walling [wrote] that ‘a large part of the white population’ in the area were waging ‘permanent warfare with the Negro race.’ Walling argued that the only way to reduce this conflict was ‘to treat the Negro on a plane of absolute political and social equality.'”

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September 1, 1908 Filed Under: Criminal Justice, Ethics, Racism Tagged With: lynchings, race hatred and warfare, white mob violence against blacks in springfield illinois in 1908

March 1, 1904

The Shame of the Cities

Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of the Cities. March 1904. Introduction: “When I [Steffens] set out to describe the corrupt systems of certain typical cities, I meant to show simply how the people were deceived and betrayed. But in the very first study–St. Louis–the startling truth lay bare that corruption was not merely political; it was financial, commercial, social; the ramifications of boodle were so complex, various, and far-reaching, that one mind could hardly grasp them….” The seven articles in The Shame of the Cities appeared first in McClure’s in 1902 and 1903 in the following order: “Tweed Days in St. Louis;” “The Shame of Minneapolis: The Rescue and Redemption of a City That Was Sold Out;” “The Shamelessness of St. Louis” (a sequel to “Tweed Days”); “Pittsburgh: A City Ashamed;” “Philadelphia: Corrupt and Content;” “Chicago: Half Free and Fighting On;” and “New York: Good Government in Danger.”

November 1, 1902

The History of the Standard Oil Company

Ida M. Tarbell, The History of the Standard Oil Company. 19-part series in McClure’s published from 1902-1904. Published as a book in 1904. “Written by journalist Ida Tarbell in 1904, The History of the Standard Oil Company was an exposé of the Standard Oil Company, run at that time by oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, the richest figure in America’s history. Originally serialized in 19 parts in McClure’s magazine, the book was a seminal example of muckraking (known today as “investigative journalism”) and inspired many other journalists to write about trusts. Trusts were large businesses that (in the absence of strong antitrust law in the 19th century) attempted to gain monopolies in various industries. The History of the Standard Oil Company was credited with hastening the breakup of Standard Oil, which came about in 1911.”