PAUL NITZE TAKES STAND IN CBS TRIAL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000707160036-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 12, 2010
• Sequence Number: 36
• Publication Date: December 5, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2010/08/12 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000707160036-3
-' NE1\T YORK TIP'ES
5 December 1984
Paul Nitze Takes Stand j
- By M. A. FARBER
Paul N. Nitze, a former Deputy Sec-
retary of Defense, testified yesterday
that he told the producer of a disputed
CBS documentary that he did not be-
lieve Gen. William C. Westmoreland
would have engaged in a conspiracy to
deceive his superiors about enemy
troo Mpstrength.
Nitze, is now the. chief
United States negotiator with the
Soviet Union in talks on limitation of in-
termediate-range nuclear weapons,
appeared in Federal District Court in
Manhattan as the 15th witness for Gen-
eral Westmoreland in his $120 million
libel suit against CBS.
The suit stems from a January, 1982
CBS Reports documentary titled "The
Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Decep-
tion." The broadcast. produced by
G'orae Crile allee a "omispiracy"
at the "highest levels" of military in-
telliaence to uppress and alter criti-'
cal intelligence on the enemy" in the
year before the Tet offensive of Janu-
a 1968.
The purpose of the "conspiracy," ac-
cording to the documentary, was to
minimize North Vietnamese and Viet-
cong strength to show that America
was winning the war in Vietnam. It
said that General Westmoreland, the.
commander of American forces in
Vietnam from 1964 to 1968, imposed an
"arbitrary ceiling" of 300,000 on re-
ports of enemy size, partly by dropping
the Vietcong's self-defense forces from
the official listing of enemy strength
known as the order of battle.
'Difficult to Be Certain'
Mr. Nitze - who was Secretary of
the Navy between 1963 and Jrmt'4
and Deputy Secretary of Defense from
then until January 1969 - testified yes-
terday that he had told Mr. Crile in Au-
gost 1981. that "it was extremely diffi-
c ult to be certain about intelligence
estimates in a war of that complexity."
:'He also recalled telling the producer
that-he had known General Westmoro-
land since the general was superintend-
ent of the United States Military Acad-
emy at West Point between 1980 and
1963, and that he was "confident" the
general "could not have been engaged
in'any kind of operation to deceive the
was interrupted to permit Mr. Nitze to
take the stand. However, the general,
who began giving evidence on Nov. 15,
The cables showed that after the Tet
offensive, w the Central Intelli-
gence Age a wanted to double e
'
estimate of enemy streak to a total
ranging to men
eral Westmoreland continued to 4M!E
that it was "not possible" to accurately
count the Vietcong's ? self-defense
forces.
In one cable General Westmoreland
--_.-~.- . -.. . ~. T..... ...L.. Le
to aence o cars that he "did -! could not recall the conversation "ver-
lieve that anyone in e VC hierarchy i ! batim" but remembered its substance.
could e a Rood estimate of the "My recollection is that he described
number of self-defense persona it as a program in which he would
But the general wrote General
Wheeler that a figure of 150,000 for the
self-defense forces was "harmless
enough" in the context of relatively low
estimates agreed on by the intelligence
community in late 1967.
Mr. Bores - apparently to show that
CBS may not have all the documents it
needs for its defense - also introduced
a cable that General Westmoreland
sent General Wheeler on April 27, 1968,
in which he said he had "destroyed all
copies" of a previous message "and re-
quest that you do likewise."
The general testified that he did not
know why the April 27 cable had been
sent or what earlier. message it re-
ferred to. .
At another stage, General Westmore-
land appeared to be embarrassed by a
discrepancy between testimony he had
given on Nov. 21 and statements he was
now giving.
It began when Dan M. Burt, the gen-
eral's lawyer, sought to introduce a
May 19, 1967, memorandum found in
Department of the Army files only last
week - a document that, unless Gen-
eral Westmoreland could identify it,
might not be received into evidence.
The two-page memorandum lent sup-
port to the general's Often-repeated
contention that be wanted the seif-de,
tease and other enemy "irreguiaz"
forces analyzed in 1967 to identify
which were armed, and that he had not
Mr. Nitze testified that he knew Mr.
Crile because the producer had been
married to Anne Patten, the daughter
of William Patten, a diplomat whom
Mr. Nitze had known since college at
Harvard. Mr. Crile is now divorced
from Miss Patten, who is also the
daughter of Susan Mary Alsop.
In August 1981, the former Defense
Department official said in a low,
measured voice, Mr. Crile came to see
him at his summer home in Northeast
Harbor, Me., and told him of the
project he was then in the midst of
demonstrate that there was great un-
certainty, in fact, error in the figures
which had been prepared as to enemy
strength in Vietnam," Mr. Nitze :.aid.
"And that he had evidence that these
figures, in fact, had been put together
a a way in which, in a conspiracy to in-
fluence or deceive the President and/
or his advisers in Washington."
Mr. Nitze said he told Mr. Crile that
he wasn't surprised that people had dif-
fered sharply over enemy strength esti-
mates - in a war that he recalled say-
ing was part conventional, part terror-
ist, part psychological and part politi-
cal. But he advised Mr. Crile, he added,
that he had "deep knowledge" of Gen-
eral Westmoreland's character and he
didn't believe the general could have
been associated with the sort of con-
spiracy the producer ,was talking
abort
On cross-examination, Mr. Bores
tried to show that Mr. Nitze's memory
of the meeting with Mr. Crile was so
"vague" that, during his deposition
only a month ago, Mr. Nitze was uncer-
tain of where it had taken place.
Mr. Nitze said he had been uncertain
not of the site of the meeting, but what
bad initiated it.:.. .
Mr. Boles, in as effort to show the
value of the self-defense forces to the
Vietcong, noted that Mr. Nitze had said
in his deposition that those units were
secreted a study then that showed the
than Nitze was also saying the units de-
hi
h
b
er
e
g
size of these forces to
previously thought. fended their villages against American
When General Westmoreland told But Mr. Nitze said he was uncertain
the jury yesterday that he ordinarily in 1967, as now, what importance to at-
read memorandums of this kind when . tach to forces that "could be one thing
he was the commander in Vietnam, one day? and "the next day be some.
Mr.. Boles noted that, on Nov. 21, he tes- thing else."
tified that he did not read them regular- During the war, he said, it was diffi-
ly. "I didn't read documents or memo- cult to "make a reasonable estimate as
rands that were not necessary for the to what those forces were." But, in
conduct of my business," the general terms of "military capability," he
had said. said, to have added their number to the
ended his cross-examination of Gen-' Now, General Westmoreland said, "I
eral Westmoreland by pointing to an was definitely in error" on Nov. 21. "I
exchange of cables in April and May didn't concentrate on the importance of
1968 between the witness and Gen. the question."
Earle Wheeler, chairman of the Joint I Eventually, Judge Pierre N. Leval
Chiefs of Staff. allowed introduction of the memoran-
,dum, which contained a scrawled note
that General Westmoreland said was in
his handwriting.
enemy's regular forces was to have
added "flies" to "elephants."
"When you aggregate elephants and
flies," he remarked, "you get non-
sense.,.
Approved For Release 2010/08/12 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000707160036-3