Ronald Ridenhour

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Ronald Ridenhour (April 6, 1946 – May 10, 1998), a young GI who served in the 11th Brigade during the Vietnam War, played a central role in spurring the investigation of the My Lai massacre.

A helicopter gunner, Ridenhour heard of the massacre from friends while serving in Vietnam. While still on active duty, he gathered eyewitness and participant accounts from other soldiers. On his return to the United States, he sent letters to 30 members of Congress and to Pentagon officials, spurring a probe that led to several indictments against and convictions of those involved, most notably William Calley.

Ridenhour went on to become an investigative journalist, winning a George Polk Award in 1987 for his expose of a tax scandal in New Orleans, based on a year-long investigation.

Ridenhour was born in Oakland, California, and was raised in Arizona. He died of a heart attack in 1998, aged 52, in Metairie, Louisiana.

[edit] The Milgram Experiment

According to Jonathan Glover's book Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, Ridenhour took part in the Princeton version of the infamous Milgram Experiment. Ridenhour was part of the minority who refused to administer electric shocks that would result in death. He was the only participant who refused to administer any shocks whatsoever.

This fact is also mentioned in the novel I, Lucifer by Glen Duncan.

[edit] Quote

"Some people -- most, it seems -- will, under some circumstances, do anything someone in authority tells them to.... Government institutions, like most humans, have a reflexive reaction to the exposure of internal corruption and wrongdoing: No matter how transparent the effort, their first response is to lie, conceal and cover up. Also like human beings, once an institution has embraced a particular lie in support of a particular coverup, it will forever proclaim its innocence."

--Los Angeles Times, March 16, 1993

[edit] External links

A first-person account of Ridenhour's investigation and exposure of the My Lai massacre, transcribed from a talk he gave at Tulane University in 1994
Ridenhour's 1969 letter to Congress and Pentagon officials
The Ridenhour Prizes