Citizens Commission of Inquiry

The Citizens Commission of Inquiry into United States War Crimes in Indochina (CCI) was founded, according to Michael Uhl, by Ralph Schoenman in November 1969 in New York. Schoenman had earlier worked on Bertrand Russell's unofficial War Crimes Tribunal in Europe. In 1970, Tod Ensign and Jeremy Rifkin, of the New Left, took over CCI to document warcrimes in Indochina.

The formation of the organization was encouraged by the Bertrand Russell Foundation in New York, and hastened by the disclosure of the My Lai Massacre. An eyewitness account and documentary history of the CCI can be found in Vietnam Awakening: My Journey from Combat to the Citizens Commission of Inquiry on US War Crimes in Vietnam (McFarland, 2007), by Michael Uhl, CCI's Veteran Coordinator at Large. In 1970, Michael Uhl, Ed Murphy and Robert Stemme exposed the Phoenix Program.

CCI organized the Dellums hearings on war crimes in Vietnam in 1971.

Ensign's descriptions of his experiences are included in Kali Tal's "Big Book: Nobody Gets Off the Bus" (1994) and in Robbin's "Against the Vietnam War: Writings by Activists" (2007).