A REPORTER S NOTEBOOK: THE JARGON OF CBS TRIAL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000707160115-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 12, 2010
• Sequence Number: 115
• Publication Date: October 29, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2010/08/12 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000707160115-5
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE -y.
NEW YORK TIMES
29 October 1984
A Reporter's No tebook:
The Jargon- of CBS Trial
? By M. A. FARBER
Like the Vietnam War itself, the
battle now being waged in Federal
Court between Gen. William C. West-
moreland and CBS rises and falls
with each day of testimony. And, each
day, it winds through verbal jungles
as dense as the lairs in which the Viet
Cong took refuge 10 to 20 years ago -
terms such as DISUMs and WIEUs,
PERINTREPs and SNIEs.
General Westmoreland, who com-
manded American troops in Vietnam
between 1964 and 1968, contends that
CBS libeled him in a 1982 documen-
tary, "The Uncounted Enemy: A
Vietnam Deception." CBS says the
broadcast was true. But, no matter
who is right, the witnesses in this
much-publicized, $120 million suit are
leading the jury through a maze of in-
telligence arcana.
The other day, Robert W. Komer,
President Johnson's special ambas-
sador in Saigon in 1967 and 1968, was
on the stand recalling a discussion he
had had about enemy strength with
George A. Carver, the chief of Viet-
namese affairs for the Central Intelli-
gence Agency.
Mr. Carver, he said, told me that
"the SNIE had run into a snag."
The jury, the lawyers, the plaintiff
and defendants all burst into laugh-
ter. The old SNIE - the SNIE about
which everyone was talking so ear-
nestly and so passionately -was hav-
ing a problem.
A SNIE was a Special National In-
telligence Estimate, a description for
the President of the enemy's capabil-
ities. In 1967, senior military officers
and the C.I.A. fought bitterly over the
size and nature of the forces to be in-
cluded in the SNIE that year, with the
C.I.A. favoring higher figures. Now,
for this trial, the fight is being re-
staged. A DISUM was a Daily Intelli-
gence Summary, put together each
morning .for General Westmoreland.
A WIEU was a Weekly Intelligence
Estimate Update. A PERINTREP
was a Periodic Intelligence Report.
All of these esoteric terms, and
more, fly like bullets through the
high-ceilinged, third-floor courtroom
on Foley Square where the trial will
go into its fourth week today.
?
Now and again, Judge Pierre N.
Leval hauls out a large, criss-crossed
board he calls his "Y.-chart" and ex-
plains to the jury that a piece of evi-
dence being introduced can be consid-
ered for both truth and "state of
mind," or for one but not the other.
On those occasions, the jurors tend to
lean forward in their seats, but
whether they have absorbed this dis-
tinction is unknown.
Judge Leval's explanations - "I
feel like a law professor," he said -
underscore the complicated nature of
the problems the jury faces in dealing
with a libel suit in which virtually
nothing of consequence has been con-
ceded by either side.
To prevail in his suit, General West-
moreland must prove that the docu-
mentary's accusations that he sought
to deceive President Johnson and the
Joint Chiefs of Staff about enemy
strength in Vietnam in 1967 mere false
- and that CBS knew they were false
or acted with "reckless disregard"
for whether they were true or false.
For the jury, that means deciding
not only the truth of what took place
in Saigon and Washington in 1967 -
including General Westmoreland's
"state of mind" - but also the "state
of mind" of CBS and certain of its em-
ployees in 1982.
For example, when David Boies,
CBS's lawyer, referred to the findings
of a 1976 Congressional report used
for the documentary, Judge Leval
cautioned the jury to consider the re-
port, not for its accuracy about the
war, but only in connection with
CBS's "state of mind" in 1982.
When a 1967 cable from Saigon to
Washington was offered as evidence,
the judge initially ruled that it could
not be used on the issue of CBS's state
of mind because the network didn't
know of its existence during the
preparation of the broadcast. He had
to reverse himself minutes later,
when Mr. Boies acknowledged that
the network had access to the docu-
ment after all.
?
Though it is cited most often as the
defendant, CBS is not alone in that
category". And the other defendants,
not being corporations, attract the
greater attention in the courtroom.
They are Mike Wallace, the broad-
cast's narrator; George Crile, its pro-
4ducer, and Samuel A. Adams, a for-
mer C.I.A. analyst who took part in
the deliberations over the SNIE in
1967 and who has said ever since that
General Westmoreland's command
reduced the figures on enemy
strength to make it appear that
America was winning the war. Mr.
Adams's research for a book on the
subject - his hundreds of pages of
"chronologies" - was used in the
preparation of the documentary, on
which he appeared.
At the defense table, Mr. Adams
writes on large yellow legal pads with
the same ardor with which he once
compiled his "chronologies." A de-
scendant of President John Adams,
Mr. Adams graduated in history from
Harvard in 1955 and spent two years
at the university's law school and
three years as a naval officer before
joining the C.I.A. in 1963 as an analyst I
on Congolese affairs. -
Next to him sits Mr. Crile, who
watches expressionlessly - hand on
cheek, fingers massaging his earlobe
- the replaying of "outtakes" that
are seldom seen outside a network's
studio. To Mr. Crile's right sits Mr.
Wallace, who has missed a few days
of court to fulfill his obligations as a
correspondent for "60 Minutes."
In front of the defendants sits Gen-
eral Westmoreland, his head cocked
back, accenting the jutting jaw that
was once an easy target for political
cartoonists. The general doesn't talk
now to Mr. Wallace and, when he
passes the defense table, he quickens
his pace. But there was a time when
General Westmoreland felt differ-
ently about Mr. Wallace.
At the start of the trial, Mr. Wallace
showed reporters a passage from his
recent book, "Close Encounters," cit-
ing a letter the general had sent him
after a "60 Minutes" story on
wounded veterans.
"I just want to tell you it was a first
class piece of reporting," General
Westmoreland had written in March
1972. "I have never seen better."
?
If there were no other way to tell
the general's lawyer-from the net-
work's - both are men of medium
physical stature who often seem
professorial in their questioning -
one could look to see which smiles.
Only Mr. Boles, an urbane litigator
who has become increasingly aggres-
sive and pointed in his cross-exami-
nation for CBS, smiles with any regu-
larity. Dan M. Burt, General West-
moreland's lawyer, is as tense as a
tight wire. Each lawyer has 150 hours
to present his case, and Judge Leval,
with a watch resting on his bench, is
keeping time.
Continued
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Both lawyers are solicitous of the
jury and the witnesses - Mr. Boies
once lapsed into calling Walt W. Ros-
tow, a former Presidential assistant,
"Your Honor" and Mr. Rostow re-
plied: "Yes, your excellency." But,
while Mr. Burt is calling "friendly"
witnesses on direct testimony, virtu-
ally certain of their answers, Mr.
Boies, on cross-examination, has the
burden of eliciting contrary testi-
mony without appearing hostile.
Mr. Burt is fond of referring to the
five segments - separated by adver-
tising - of the 90-minute CBS docu-
mentary as five "acts," as if they
were theater rather than fact. But the
lawyer's frequent complaint before
the trial that his Capital Legal Foun-
dation lacked the resources to com-
pete with Mr. Boies's elite corporate
firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore now
seems dated.
A few feet from Mr. Burt, in a green
leather armchair against a wall of the
courtroom, sits an unobtrusive figure
with a pad on his lap and an eye on the
witness. lie is George S. Leisure Jr.,
a senior partner of one of the nation's
leading law firms - Donovan Leisure
Newton & Irvine. Mr. Leisure, an ex-
perienced litigator, is there to advise
Mr. Burt, an international tax spe-
cialist who has never tried a case be-
fore a jury. And since August, he has
provided office space at his firm for
Mr. Burt, and the full-time assistance
of two law associates.
"I wouldn't take the case away
from Dan under any circumstances,"
Mr. Leisure said the other day. "But
if he didn't listen to me, I'd go back to
doing something else."
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