Media attention on Lt Calley's trial was extensive and the glare of publicity so bright it hid the wider, more awful truth.
Before that trial got under way, the United States army had, behind closed doors, completed an investigation of its own into the events at My Lai, and specifically into the possibility that those in authority had deliberately covered up a massacre.
Convened on 1 December 1969 in the basement of the Pentagon, The Department of the Army Review of the Preliminary Investigations into The My Lai Incident, known in abbreviated form as The Peers Inquiry, was chaired by Lt Gen William 'Ray' Peers.
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In 1987, they were shipped to the US National Archives, as one small portion of a massive group of records of US Army activities in Vietnam.
There they remained hidden, never catalogued, never investigated, never uncovered - until last year.
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MUCH more:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7298533.stmThere is a BBC Radio 4 broadcast, available for the next 7 days, on this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/archivehour/pip/lqufd/