In 1968, Seymour Hersh was an ambitious young freelance reporter writing for The New York Times. His big break came when he got a tip from an antiwar attorney about a soldier who killed a bunch of civilians in Vietnam. Hersh floated that story by a general working for the Army Chief of Staff, who mentioned an Army officer named William Calley. Armed with a name, Hersh tracked down Calley’s lawyer, George Latimer, in Utah. In Latimer’s office, Hersh laid eyes on an army indictment sheet charging Calley with the murder of 109 "Oriental human beings.” In 2008, Brooke Gladstone spoke to Hersh about how he broke the story of My Lai — the massacre now regarded as the single most notorious atrocity of the Vietnam war. 

This is a segment from our June 23, 2023 program, TK. It originally aired on our March 14, 2008 program, and on our August 15, 2008 program.