The Vietnam War Crimes Working Group (VWCWG) was a Pentagon task force set up in the wake of the My Lai massacre and its media disclosure.
Nick Turse, a freelance journalist, rediscovered the archive while researching his doctoral dissertation for the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia University.
He managed to examine most of the files, and obtained copies of about 3,000 pages—representing roughly a third of the total—before government officials removed them from the public shelves in 2002, stating they contained personal information that was exempt from the FOIA.
Nick Turse collaborated with Deborah Nelson, a former staff writer and current Washington D.C. investigative editor for the Los Angeles Times, to employ these documents to form the core of a series of articles.
[citation needed] They also were used for a book by Nelson entitled The War Behind Them, which includes stories about how the interviews were conducted, transcripts, and descriptions of travels to Vietnam for further investigations.