In 1971, with the My Lai massacre still vivid in the public consciousness, 109 Vietnam War veterans gathered in a hotel in Detroit and, in front of news journalists and a collective of young filmmakers, spoke frankly about their experiences in Vietnam. They called themselves the Winter Soldiers and their testimonials are devastating: women raped and disemboweled, children murdered, prisoners thrown from helicopters, ears severed, villages burned, and families slaughtered. Almost instantaneously, a pro-war backlash set out to discredit the veterans and their stories, and though their brave confessions were hailed by many senators and congressman, the news media never aired any of the footage.

The filmmakers who were present, including Barbara Kopple (HARLAN COUNTY U.S.A.), masterfully edited the three days of interviews into a single 96-minute presentation. Almost as harrowing as the accounts themselves are the haunted looks and the trembling voices of the young men as they speak openly of becoming debased monsters who were willing to commit atrocities. Though the film seemed to be inexorable evidence that Vietnam war crimes were commonplace rather than anomalous, the film received scant screenings, and the stories never reached the majority of the American public.

During the 2004 presidential election, the Winter Soldier Investigation resurfaced in regards to John Kerry's involvement with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and his role as a pivotal organizer of the event. A group of veterans, indignant over any supposed defamation of soldiers and their actions, set out to attack Kerry's wartime credentials, and to paint the Winter Soldier stories as spurious and fabricated.

In 2005, more than 30 years after it was made, WINTER SOLDIER received general distribution, and the film remained as unsettling and pertinent than ever. The charges that the men were imposters seem ludicrous in the face of these blistering and self-crucifying descriptions of human behavior in wartime. The film still evokes a visceral response and raises questions of what, eventually, may be revealed about military abuses and crimes in Iraq.