I met Brian Mizer in 2018, while directing an episode of our documentary series Terror. We arranged to meet at a diner in Alexandria, Washington, D.C., just around the corner from the motel where my crew and I were staying. What struck me immediately was his decisiveness, his sense of purpose; a serious man. With no dedicated interview location at hand, I asked if he was comfortable doing the interview in my motel room. “Sure,” he said. In his impeccably pressed white uniform, he sat on a stool, and in my memory, I didn’t need to ask any questions, he just fired away.
Brian spoke about torture, rendition, and how the U.S. government had detained his client for years without formal charges. His focus was on how the U.S. was physically and mentally destroying a 37-year-old Saudi man, and all I could think about was this serious man in uniform, standing alone against his beloved country.
My parents, from as far back as I can remember, impressed upon me the importance of learning English. They surrounded me with American and British literature, alongside magazines like Life, Time and Reader’s Digest. One issue of Life, dated December 5, 1969, has remained with me through the years, tucked away in a carton box through countless relocations. Its pages recount the horror of the My Lai massacre during the American war in Vietnam. My Lai, the village in Vietnam where war criminal Lieutenant William Calley and his soldiers gangraped, tortured and murdered over 500 Vietnamese civilians.
Though I was only three years old when Life magazine published its story on the My Lai massacre, that issue somehow became a lasting companion, transcending the event itself. Its brutality, stark and undeniable, was clear in every image. To this day, every time I look at the blurry photograph of the women and children huddled together, just seconds before their execution, a wave of nausea hits me as I notice the young woman in the back, nervously trying to button her shirt to cover the small glimpse of her exposed belly. Yet, the emotion that lingered for me was not horror, it was loneliness. I believe I’ve held onto that magazine all these years not merely as a reminder of war’s cruelty, but because it symbolised the social isolation of two soldiers, Hugh Thompson Jr. and Lawrence Colburn, going against their country.
On March 16, 1968 Hugh Thompson Jr., Lawrence Colburn and Glenn Andreotta (who died several days later in a separate incident) had been flying their Hiller OH-23 Raven helicopter above the carnage at My Lai. From their helicopter, they could see bodies strewn across the landscape. Thompson Jr.: “Everywhere we’d look, we’d see bodies. These were infants, two-, three-, four-, five-year-olds, women, very old men, no draft-age people whatsoever.” Colburn: “Then we saw a young girl about twenty years old lying on the grass. We could see that she was unarmed and wounded in the chest. We were hovering six feet off the ground not more than twenty feet away when Captain Medina came over, kicked her, stepped back, and finished her off. He did it right in front of us. When we saw Medina do that, it clicked. It was our guys doing the killing.”
In shock and disbelief, Thompson Jr. and his crew scanned the village for civilians to save. They spotted a group of women, children, and elderly fleeing as soldiers from the 2nd Platoon advanced. Thompson Jr. landed his helicopter between the troops and the villagers. He ordered his men, Colburn and Andreotta, to open fire on the platoon if they attempted to harm the civilians. With his crew providing cover, Thompson Jr. evacuated as many villagers as possible, arranging their rescue with the help of nearby pilots.
Thompson Jr. survived the American war in Vietnam. On return to the United States, he insisted on being interviewed about My Lai. Initially the army successfully managed to suppress the story. When news of the massacre broke, Thompson Jr. repeated his account and was invited to speak in front of the House Armed Services Committee. However, instead of being commended for protecting Vietnamese civilians, Congressman Mendel Rivers (D-N.C.) publicly shamed him, calling for his punishment for turning his weapons on his own, on American soldiers.
Afterwards Thompson Jr. was vilified by many Americans for his testimony against his fellow soldiers. “I’d received death threats over the phone. Dead animals on my porch.” As he told The Associated Press in 2004: “Don’t do the right thing looking for a reward, because it might not come.” Thompson Jr. reunited with Colburn and together they returned to Vietnam. They spoke openly about their experiences, sharing their stories with audiences who could finally hear the full weight of what they had endured.
Sitting in front of Brian Mizer, I couldn’t help but think of the Life magazine I carried with me all those years. Perhaps it was the seriousness with which Mizer recounted the events surrounding his client which made me think of Thompson Jr. and Colburn on that fateful day in Vietnam in 1968. Mizer revealed the brutal techniques the U.S. government had used against Al-Nashiri. Mizer: “In Mr Al-Nashiri’s case the government concedes that he was questioned with a power drill, he was questioned with a hand gun, and he was also subjected to what’s called rectal feeding. Another heretofore unknown term in American English, which involves essentially sexual assault by object.” Mizer, like Thompson and Colburn, had the courage to stand against his own, a true American hero in a different kind of war.
When I think of Mizer, sitting across from me, unbelievably young, I can only wonder how he carries the weight of such isolation. To turn against your own for the sake of justice is no easy path. Thompson Jr. and Colburn experienced it, and now so does Mizer. For men like Mizer, Thompson Jr., and Colburn, the reward is not in accolades but in the quiet, heavy knowledge that they chose the harder path. It is a burden of integrity, one that too often leaves them standing alone.
