WESTMORELAND TELLS LIBEL JURY CBS DECEIVED HIM ON FOCUS OF '82 PROGRAM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000707160069-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 12, 2010
• Sequence Number: 69
• Publication Date: November 20, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2010/08/12 :CIA-RDP90-005528000707160069-7
ARTICLE APPEARED NEW YORK TIMES
. ON PAGE --/ J 20 November- 198+
Westmoreland Tells Libel Jury CBS
__
Deceived Him on Focus of '82 Program
.,~ By M. A. FAR$ER
Gen. William C. Westmoreland testi-
fied yesterday that CBS had deceived
and "rattlesnaked" him during prepa-
ration of its 1982 documentary about
Vietnam that is now the subject of his
x120 million libel suit against the net-
work.
The 70-year-old retired general, con-
tinuing direct testimony in Federal
District Court in Manhattan, said that
when he agreed to be interviewed on
camera for the broadcast, he was led to
believe the focus of the program was
the enemy's TeY offensive of January
1968, during the last of his four years as
commander of American forces in
Vietnam.
But during the interview at a CBS
studio in New York on May 16, 1981, the
general said, Mike Wallace, the broad-
cast's narrator, asked him unexpected
questions about a 1967 dispute over the
size and nature of the enemy forces in
South Vietnam.
Focuses on Controversy
90-minute CBS Reports documentary,
"The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam
notes at the Department oath-e Army in
Washington.
He said he had been expecting alet-
ter in South Carolina from CBS outlin-
ing specific matters to be covered in
the interview: But he said he did not re-
ceive such a letter until he arrived at
the Plaza Hotel on May 15. In the letter
Mr. Crile had described five areas that ~
were.to be covered in the interview.
The fourth asked: "What about thecon-
troversy between C.I.A. and the mili-
taryoverenemy strength estimates?"
But once the interview was under
way, General Westmorelatd testified,
he fotmd that he was being questioned
about s remote matter that he had not
had an opportunity to research.
`I became very angry, very disillu-
sioned," he recalled. "I realized I was
not participating in a rational inter-
view -this was an inquisition. I was
participating in my own lynching, but
the problem was I didn't know what I
was being lynched for."
As the general went on -saying that
Mr. Crile and Mr. Wallace had "gone
for my jugular" and had "ambushed"
him -David Boies, CBS's lawyer, ob-
jected and that remark was stricken
from the record by Judge Pierre N.
Leval.
Dan M. Burt, General Westmore-
land's lawyer, then asked the general
Both Mr. Wallace, who is 66, and Mr.
Crile, 39, are also defendants in the
trial, now in its seventh week. Mr.
Crile, who suggested the program to
CBSin a 16-page proposal in November
1980 that used the word "conspiracy"
24 times, has attended every session of
the trial. Mr. Wallace, who has been in
Ethiopia on assignment, has missed all
of General Westmoreland's testimony.
Denies High Infiltration
Late yesterday, the general's ap-
pearance on the stand was interrupted
to allow William P. Bundy, who had a
conflict of schedule, to begin his testi-
mony. Mr. Boies successfully objected,
on the grounds of relevance, to much of
the testimony by Mr. Bundy, who was
Assistant Secretary of State for East
Asian and Pacific Affairs under Presi-
dent Johnson. He, like General West-
moreland, is expected to continue testi-
fying today.
In the general's other testimony yes-
terday, lie said that none of his intelli-
Bence officers had reported to him that,
in the fall of 1967, North Vietnamese in-
filtration into South Vietnam was any- i
where as high as 20,000 to 25,000 a ~
month - a range that, he said, was not
achieved by the enemy until the weeks
just before the Tet offensive.
Mr. Wallace said on the broadcast
that "CBS has learned that during the
five months preceding the Tet offen-
sive, Westmoreland's infiltration ana-
lysts had actually been reporting, not';
seven or eight thousand, but more than
25,000 North Vietnamese comu-g down
the Ho Chi Minh Trail each month, and
that amounted to a near invasion. But
The documentary ajIeged a "conspit- i why he had not walked out of the inter-
acyt' at the "highest levels" of military , !view.
intelligence to minimize the size of the ; Twice, the witness began to say that
America was winning the war. The re-
sult of the conspiracy, Mr. Wallace
said, was to leave President Johnson,
the Joint Chiefs of Staff and American
troops "totally unprepared" for the
scale of the Tet offensive.
General Westmoreland told the jury
that when Mr. Wallace called him at
his home in Charleston, S.C., in early
May 1981 and asked him to do an inter-
view "on a special program about Viet-
nam," heasked Mr. Wallace whether it
was "going to be a '60 Minutes' type
program "
"He said, `Oh, no, this is to be an
educational and objective type ptti-
gram,' "General Westmoreland said.
During another call, the general testi-
fied, he was told by George Crile, the
documentary's producer, that the pro-
gram was "to be built around the Tet
offensive."
Decided to Cooperate
So, the general testified, he decided
to cooperate, and before he arrived in
New York, he read up on the subject of
the offensive by reviewing his personal
because "I had seen so many times on
'60 Minutes' "
Judge Leval interrupted.."Is this
being objected to, IVir. Boies?"
"Yes, your honor," said Mr. Boies.
"I thought .. the same . .."
"Am I supposed to guess that?" said
the judge:
The lawyers went to the bench. Fi-
nally, Mr. Burt was allowed to ask Gen-
, eral Westmoreland whether he had de-
cided not to terminate the interview
"because that would be taken as an ad-
mission of guilt?"
"Yes," said the witness, adding that
he had told Mr. Wallace and Mr. Crile
at the end of the interview that he had
'been "deceived about the nature of the
interview. Aad I said to them: 'I have
been rattlesnaked.' "
Continued
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those reports of a dramatically in-
creased infiltration were systemati-
cally blocked."
General Westmoreland himself
seemed to lend credence to the CBS as-
sertion by saying on the broadcast that
infiltration "was in the magnitude of
about 20,000 a month. That's actually -
and this tempo started in the fall and
continued."
Wallace: Twenty thousand a month?
Westmoreland: Yes. On that order of
magnitude.
Incorporating old footage, the docu-
mentary then showed the general ap-
~ peering on a Nov. 19, 1867, "Meet the
Press" program in which he' estimated
that infiltration at that time was "be-
tween 5,500 and 6,000." -
"Sounds to me like misstatement,"
General Westmoreland told Mr. Wa1-
lace, in response. "And if I said that, I
was wrong. I was wrong."
Sent CBS a Letter
Yesterday, General Westmoreland
said that several weeks after his inter-
view, he sent Mr. Wallace and Mr.
Crile a letter enclosing official infiltra-
tion records from that period.
Mr. Burt introduced a copy of the let-
ter, in which the general noted, that
"after 14 years have gone by," he was
"unable to speak with precision on the
details of items presented to you by
your researchers." He said he had now
had time to examine his files and that
his "'estimate" on "Meet the i~Yess"
i had been "generally correct..'
The general told the jury that his let-
terwas not acknowledged by CBS, and
he was not questioned about the new ia-
formation he supplied. He also said it
was "totally inconceivable" for infil-
tration into South Vietnam to have
reached 25,000 a month without it being
generally known.
The general' testified that, like the
White House and a variety of intelli-
gence agencies, he was aware by
November 1967 that a large member of
North Vietnamese regular troops were
moving southward in North Vietnam,
without yet crossing the border.
In his letter of June 9,1981, and in aa-
other letter to Mr. Wallace and Mr. j
Crile a month later, General West-
moreland urged the two- "i! it is your
purpose to be fair and objective during
your quest, which I assume you intend
to be" - to interview ahalf-dawn sen-
ior military or civilian officials from
.1967, including Ellsworth Bunker, the
former Umted States Ambassador in
'Vietnam. Most were not ti>*.erviewed.
Yesterday, Mr. Burt prompted
laughter when he asked the general
whether he licked his lips often during
the interview with Mr. Wallace - as
was apparent during the broadcast.
General Westmoreland explained
that he hadn't known that, when Mr.
Wallace was speaking, a camera on_
him was still rolling.
"I was under bright lighffi, and my
lips were dried out," he said. "But
there was good fall-out from this. My
wife introduced me to stuff which I've
used ever since." -
Mrs. Westmoreland, who atteads the
trial regularly. told reporters the
"stuff"'was ChaA Stick.
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