Tiger Force was a long-range reconnaissance patrol unit of the United States Army's 101st Airborne Division which served in the Vietnam War. Organizationally part of the 327th Infantry Regiment's 1st Battalion (Airborne) in the 101st Airborne Division's 1st Brigade (Separate), the unit was founded by Major David Hackworth and primarily active from November 1965 to November 1967. It gained notoriety after investigations during the course of the war and decades afterwards revealed the unit had committed extensive war crimes against hundreds of Vietnamese civilians. Hackworth, who left Vietnam before the unit began committing war crimes, claimed he was unaware of Tiger Force's atrocities and refused to speculate on why they occurred.
Composition
thumb|right|Members of Tiger Force move along an infiltration trail, 1968
The platoon-sized unit, approximately 45 paratroopers, was organized by Major David Hackworth in November 1965 to "outguerrilla the guerrillas". In October 1968, Tiger Force's parent battalion was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation by President Lyndon B. Johnson, which included a mention of Tiger Force's service at Đắk Tô in June 1966.
Investigations of war crimes
thumb|right|Recon. Platoon leader, 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry, uses an AN/PRC-25 radio to check with his command helicopter for new directions, 1969
On October 19, 2003, Michael D. Sallah, a reporter for The Toledo Blade newspaper, obtained unreleased, confidential records of U.S. Army commander Henry Tufts. One file in these records referred to a previously unpublished war crimes investigation known as the Coy Allegation. To investigate this further, Sallah gained access to a large collection of documents produced by the investigation held at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland.
Sallah found that between 1971 and 1975, the Army's Criminal Investigation Command had investigated the Tiger Force unit for alleged war crimes committed between May and November 1967.
- an incident where a young mother was drugged, raped, and then executed
After studying the documents, Sallah and fellow reporter, Mitch Weiss, located and interviewed dozens of veterans who served in Tiger Force during the period in question as well as the United States Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) investigators who later carried out the Army's inquiry. The reporters also traveled to Vietnam and tracked down numerous residents of Song Ve Valley who identified themselves as witnesses. Sallah and Weiss reported that the war crimes were corroborated by both veterans and Song Ve Valley residents. The reporters also managed to track down dozens of additional investigative records not included in the National Archives.
The reporters published their findings in a series of articles in The Toledo Blade in October 2003. The New York Times subsequently performed their own investigation, contacting a few Tiger Force veterans and corroborating The Toledo Blades findings.
Since The Blades story, the United States Army has opened a review of the former Tiger Force investigation, but has not yet provided much additional information. On May 11, 2004, Lt. Col. Pamela Hart informed The Blade reporters that she had been too busy responding to prisoner abuse by U.S. soldiers in Iraq to check on the status of the Tiger Force case. The Blade has not reported on any more recent updates from the U.S. Army.
Reporters Michael D. Sallah, Mitch Weiss, and Joe Mahr received a number of awards for their series:
- In 2003, the reporters won the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) Medal.
- In 2003, the reporters won the Sigma Delta Chi Award for investigative reporting, for publications with a circulation of 100,000 or greater.
- In 2004, the reporters won the Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Newspapers.
- In 2004, the reporters won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.
In 2006, Sallah, now an investigative reporter with The Washington Post, and Weiss, an investigative reporter with the Associated Press, co-authored a book chronicling their findings: Tiger Force: A True Story of Men and War (2006).