The No Gun Ri survivors' committee called the U.S. Army report a "whitewash" of command responsibility. "
This is not enough for the massacre of over 60 hours, of 400 innocent people who were hunted like animals," said committee head Chung Eun-yong.
The survivors rejected the notion that the killings were "not deliberate", pointing to accounts from veterans and to documents attesting to front-line orders to shoot civilians.
Lawmakers of both the ruling and opposition party in South Korea criticized the U.S. position.


Former U.S. congressman Pete McCloskey of California, the only one of eight outside advisers to the U.S. inquiry to write a detailed analysis afterward, agreed with the Koreans, saying, "I thought the Army report was a whitewash."
In a letter to Defense Secretary Cohen, another U.S. adviser, retired Marine general Bernard E. Trainor, expressed sympathy with the hard-pressed U.S. troops of 1950, but said the killings were unjustified, and that "the American command was responsible for the loss of innocent civilian life in or around No-Gun-Ri."


Journalists and scholars subsequently noted that the U.S. report either did not address or presented incomplete versions of key declassified documents, some previously reported in the news media.
News reports pointed out that the U.S. review, in describing the July 1950 Air Force memo, did not acknowledge that it said refugees were being strafed at the Army's request.
Researchers found that the U.S. review had not disclosed the existence of U.S. Air Force mission reports during this period  documenting the strafing of apparent refugee groups and air strikes in the No Gun Ri vicinity.
The report did not address the commanders' July 26–27, 1950, instructions in the 25th Infantry Division saying that civilians in the war zone would be considered unfriendly and shot.
In saying no such orders were issued at No Gun Ri, the Army did not disclose that the 7th Cavalry log, which would have held such orders, was missing from the National Archives.

After the Army issued its report, it was learned that it also had not disclosed its researchers' discovery of at least 14 additional declassified documents showing high-ranking commanders ordering or authorizing the shooting of refugees in the Korean War's early months, such as communications from 1st Cavalry Division commander Gay and a top division officer to consider refugees north of the front line "fair game" and to "shoot all refugees coming across river".
In addition, interview transcripts obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests showed that the Army had not reported repeated testimony from ex-soldiers that, as one put it, "the word I heard was 'Kill everybody from 6 to 60'" during their early days in Korea.

In 2005, American historian Sahr Conway-Lanz reported his discovery of a declassified document at the National Archives in which the United States Ambassador to Korea in 1950, John J. Muccio, notified the State Department on the day the No Gun Ri killings began that the U.S. military, fearing infiltrators, had adopted a policy of shooting South Korean refugee groups that approached U.S. lines despite warning shots.
Pressed by the South Korean government, the Pentagon eventually acknowledged it deliberately omitted the Muccio letter from its 2001 report.
The No Gun Ri survivors' committee called the U.S. Army report a "whitewash" of command responsibility. "This is not enough for the massacre of over 60 hours, of 400 innocent people who were hunted like animals," said committee head Chung Eun-yong. The survivors rejected the notion that the killings were "not deliberate", pointing to accounts from veterans and to documents attesting to front-line orders to shoot civilians. Lawmakers of both the ruling and opposition party in South Korea criticized the U.S. position.

Former U.S. congressman Pete McCloskey of California, the only one of eight outside advisers to the U.S. inquiry to write a detailed analysis afterward, agreed with the Koreans, saying, "I thought the Army report was a whitewash." In a letter to Defense Secretary Cohen, another U.S. adviser, retired Marine general Bernard E. Trainor, expressed sympathy with the hard-pressed U.S. troops of 1950, but said the killings were unjustified, and that "the American command was responsible for the loss of innocent civilian life in or around No-Gun-Ri." 

Journalists and scholars subsequently noted that the U.S. report either did not address or presented incomplete versions of key declassified documents, some previously reported in the news media. News reports pointed out that the U.S. review, in describing the July 1950 Air Force memo, did not acknowledge that it said refugees were being strafed at the Army's request. Researchers found that the U.S. review had not disclosed the existence of U.S. Air Force mission reports during this period  documenting the strafing of apparent refugee groups and air strikes in the No Gun Ri vicinity. The report did not address the commanders' July 26–27, 1950, instructions in the 25th Infantry Division saying that civilians in the war zone would be considered unfriendly and shot. In saying no such orders were issued at No Gun Ri, the Army did not disclose that the 7th Cavalry log, which would have held such orders, was missing from the National Archives. 
After the Army issued its report, it was learned that it also had not disclosed its researchers' discovery of at least 14 additional declassified documents showing high-ranking commanders ordering or authorizing the shooting of refugees in the Korean War's early months, such as communications from 1st Cavalry Division commander Gay and a top division officer to consider refugees north of the front line "fair game" and to "shoot all refugees coming across river". In addition, interview transcripts obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests showed that the Army had not reported repeated testimony from ex-soldiers that, as one put it, "the word I heard was 'Kill everybody from 6 to 60'" during their early days in Korea.
In 2005, American historian Sahr Conway-Lanz reported his discovery of a declassified document at the National Archives in which the United States Ambassador to Korea in 1950, John J. Muccio, notified the State Department on the day the No Gun Ri killings began that the U.S. military, fearing infiltrators, had adopted a policy of shooting South Korean refugee groups that approached U.S. lines despite warning shots. Pressed by the South Korean government, the Pentagon eventually acknowledged it deliberately omitted the Muccio letter from its 2001 report.
No Gun Ri massacre