WESTMORELAND TESTIFIES; TIME EDITOR WARNS OF LIBEL-SUIT 'MENACE'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000707160070-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 12, 2010
• Sequence Number: 70
• Publication Date: November 19, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2010/08/12 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000707160070-5
ARTICLE APPEARID
ON PAGE___.
Westmoreland testifies; Time editor warns
of libel-suit `menace'
By Victoria Irwin
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
last week, Henry A. Grunwald, editor in chief of Time
Inc., warned that the current'-'wave-of libel. actions , .
have become a serious menace." to the press and to the
country. Time is currently being sued for $50 million by
the former Israeli defense minister, Gen. Ariel Sharon.
Mr. Grunwald says part of the reason for the increase
in, libel suits is that "the press is taken more seriously
and is seen as more powerful than ever before." He
spoke of the landmark 1964 New York Times vs. Sulli-
van case, in which the US Supreme Court held that a
public official cannot collect damages for a defamatory
falsehood unless he proves it was published with-"actual
malice" - that is, knowing it 'was false, or recklessly
disregarding the truth.
That decision, which later was widened to include
public figures, gave judicial commitment to "uninhib-
ited, robust, and wide open" public debate on a 'national
scale, Grunwald said.
Others would like to see the "actual malice" standard
dropped. Bruce E. Fein, an adjunct scholar at the Ameri-
can Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Fbundation, and
other conservative interest groups - says that the doc-
trine actually acts as a deterrent to public service, be-
cause it encourages "persons to attack the reputation of
public officials by the dissemination of falsehoods."
Instead of "probing the internal mind" of journalists
to find what their state of mind was while doing a story,
ordinary standards of verification and substantiation
should be considered, he says. Others charge that this
would amount to regulation of news gathering and would
be inimical to First Amendment protections.
New York
The courtroom at the William C. Westmoreland vs.
CBS News trial has been packed while the white-haired
retired general - the epitome of a no-nonsense military
leader - has testified in his $120 million libel suit in a
Manhattan federal court.
In testimony on Thursday and Friday, General West-
moreland attempted to repudiate charges in a 1982 CBS
documentary that information on enemy force strength
in Vietnam was "suppressed and altered" and that he or-
dered a ceiling of 300,000 on estimates of enemy forces.
In answer to questions from his attorney, Dan M.
Burt, Westmoreland defended the removal of Viet Cong
political cadres and self-defense forces from the enemy
troop data. He said his decision was not aimed at sup-
pressing information back in Washington, but was de-
signed to get a more realistic picture of the "people we
wanted to destroy in a military way." The so-called
irregulars were not an offensive force, but basically civil-
ians - women, children, and old men, he said.
The controversy over the self-defense forces came
when a draft cable written by Maj. Gen. Joseph A.
McChristian, his chief of intelligence until June 1967,
showed a dramatic increase in numbers in that category.
Westmoreland asked for a briefing on the new figures,
and declined to send the cable.
"Such a cable, with its numbers, would be terribly
misleading and could be misconstrued by people not fa-i
miliar with this category," Westmoreland told thejurwL
But Westmoreland said that he supplied the higher fig-
ures to the two superiors he was required to report to,
Adm. Ulysses S. Grant, commander in chief of Pacific
forces, and Ellsworth Bunker, United States ambassador.
to South Vietnam: ? _ _ .
In the CBS documentary, General McChristian said
he had the impression that Westmoreland felt that the re-
lease of such figures to Washington would have created a
"political bombshell." On the program, Mike Wallace,
one of the codefendents in the case, said McChristian
was transferred shortly after the report was "sup-
pressed," and that it was at that point that intelligence.,.
reports on enemy strength began to be altered. ..; . , , ,
Outside the courtroom, another battle continues over
the question of libel. In a speech at New York University
Approved For Release 2010/08/12 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000707160070-5