About the series/The Blade's team

10/19/2003

Mitch Weiss

THE BLADE
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The Blade's investigation began after the newspaper obtained 22 pages of classified Army records detailing atrocities by Tiger Force.

The records of the Army's Criminal Investigation Command were just the start.

Reporters reviewed volumes of research on the Vietnam War, finding no mention of the Army's investigation of the platoon's atrocities.

They inspected thousands of declassified records of the case from the National Archives in suburban Washington and obtained hundreds of additional classified documents of the case. They also interviewed dozens of former Tiger Force soldiers.

The Blade sent reporters Michael D. Sallah and Mitch Weiss, as well as photographer Andy Morrison, to the Central Highlands of Vietnam, where they found witnesses to the atrocities.

Reporter Joe Mahr joined the team as the newspaper pieced together a story the U.S. Army never wanted told.

Michael D. Sallah is The Blade's national affairs writer. Since joining the newspaper in 1989, he has covered issues from the Florida presidential election recount of 2000 to the recent sexual-abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic church. He has won state and national awards and twice been named the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists' reporter of the year.

Michael Sallah speaks with National Public Radio about the series:

http://www.npr.org/

Mitch Weiss is The Blade's state editor. He joined the newspaper in 1998 after spending 12 years with The Associated Press, where he won state and national awards. Since joining The Blade he reported on the subway World Series in New York in 2000 and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001.

Joe Mahr is a general assignment/projects reporter with The Blade. Since joining the newspaper in 2000, he has won statewide awards for coverage of Toledo's 2001 mayoral race and northwest Ohio's decades-long economic slide.

Andy Morrison is a staff photographer for The Blade. A winner of numerous state and regional awards, he joined the newspaper in 2000 and has photographed events ranging from the tornadoes that struck northwest Ohio last fall to the June race riots in Benton Harbor, Mich.

(Story was published on Oct. 19, 2003)