On February 23, 2004, the History News Network hosted an online debate between Robert Bateman and the AP reporters who wrote the series of investigative articles in 1999.

• Robert Bateman criticized the AP report.
• The Associated Press reporters replied.
• Bateman's reply to the AP reporters.
• Associated Press reporter Hanley's reply to Bateman.
• Bateman replied to Hanley.

According to historian Sahr Conway-Lanz, the position taken by the Pentagon after its 1999-2001 investigation — that the U.S. military did not order the refugees shot — is untenable.[15] In an April 2006 book, Conway-Lanz published a letter from then U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, John J. Muccio,[16] informing the State Department that U.S. troops were authorized to shoot at refugees. The letter referred to policy set down on July 25, 1950.[17]

On May 29, 2006, the Associated Press reported in a story that was printed in The Washington Post that the letter, cited by Conway-Lenz, which had not previously been known, "is the strongest indication yet that such a policy existed for all U.S. forces in Korea, and (is) the first evidence that that policy was known to upper ranks of the U.S. government."[18]

The Associated Press reported on April 12, 2007, that the Army has acknowledged it found — but did not divulge in 2001 when it issued its official inquiry — that a high-level document revealed the U.S. military had a policy of shooting approaching civilians in South Korea. The article said the document was one of numerous omissions of documents and testimony pointing to a policy of firing on refugee groups in the army's investigation.[8]

Bateman's 2002 book, however, reproduced the entire military order which came out of that same high-level US-ROK meeting, and did so verbatim. These were the instructions that went from that highest level down to the divisions, and from there to the regiments, and from there to the battalions, over the next days. The letter, from the U.S. Ambassador to Korea to the State Department, describing the meeting out of which the orders flowed does not matter to military events on the ground at No Gun Ri. The AP articles on the topic try to suggest conspiracy on the part of the historians working on President Clinton's investigation. The State Department, however, did not command military troops in the field in Korea, and so the letter serves only as evidence impugning the credibility of any other government statement saying that orders had not been given. The Ambassador's letter may be irrelevant to the investigation of events that occurred the next day at No Gun Ri beyond establishing the mere existence of discussion of general orders at a high level regarding shooting refugees feared to contain hostile forces.