Ronald L . Haeberle Ronald L . Haeberle ( born circa 1940 ) is a former United States Army photographer best known for the photographs he took of the My Lai Massacre in March 1968 . Some of the ( black and white ) photographs he took were made using an Army camera and were either subject to censorship or did not depict any Vietnamese casualties when published in an Army newspaper . On the other hand , Haeberle took color photographs with his own camera while on duty the same day , which he kept and later sold to the media . The then - Sgt . Haeberle , having returned to his hometown of Cleveland , Ohio after an honorable discharge , offered them to " The Plain Dealer " ; the newspaper published some of them on November 20 , 1969 . Haeberle soon after sold the photos to " Life magazine " magazine , which were published in the December 1 , 1969 issue . One of the photos in particular became iconic of the massacre , in large part because of its use in the " And babies " poster , which was distributed around the world used in protest marches where it was televised and reproduced in newspapers . Background . As the Charlie Company ' s 3rd platoon moved into the hamlet of My Lai , it was followed by Ronald Haeberle , there to document what was supposed to be a significant encounter with a crack Viet Cong battalion . According to Camilla Griggers , professor of Visual Communication and Linguistics at California State University : " The Army photographer , Ronald Haeberle , assigned to Charlie Company on March 16 , 1968 had two cameras . One was an Army standard ; one was his personal camera . The film on the Army - owned camera , i . e . , the official camera of the State , showed standard operations that is “ authorized ” and “ official ” operations including interrogating villagers and burning “ insurgent ” huts . What the film on the personal camera showed , however , was different . When turned over to the press and Government by the photographer , those “ unofficial ” photographs provided the grounds for a court martial . Haeberle ' s personal images ( owned by himself and not the US Government ) showed hundreds of villagers who had been killed by U . S . troops . More significantly , they showed that the dead were primarily women and children , including infants . " As is evident from comments made in a 1969 telephone conversation between United States National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird , revealed recently by the National Security Archive , the photos of the war crime were too shocking for senior officials to stage an effective cover - up . Secretary of Defense Laird is heard to say , " " There are so many kids just lying there ; these pictures are authentic . " " Haeberle later testified that he personally saw about 30 different American soldiers kill about 100 civilians . According to the investigation , Haeberle previously " withheld and suppressed from proper authorities the photographic evidence of atrocities he had obtained " despite " having a particular duty to report any knowledge of suspected or apparent war crimes " . However Haeberle had claimed in his testimony that he did not turn in his photographic film of the atrocities to the brigade information office , because " if you take a photograph of a general smiling wrong in the photograph , you destroyed that photograph " , therefore Haeberle felt his photographs would have been destroyed if he had turned them in as was standard practice . Aftermath . During the summer of 2012 , Ron Haeberle visited Vietnam and My Lai hamlet , where he met with Tran Van Duc , a survivor of the My Lai massacre .