POINT BY POINT, EX-ANALYST DETAILS CASE AGAINST GENERAL

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Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP90-00965R000807690005-0
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RIFPUB
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K
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1
Document Creation Date: 
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date: 
January 6, 2012
Sequence Number: 
5
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Publication Date: 
January 15, 1985
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OPEN SOURCE
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Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/06: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807690005-0 By David Zucchino ' Inquirer Staff writer NEW YORK - Dissecting point by point a litany of allegations made in a disputed CBS documentary, former CIA analyst Sam Adams detailed to a jury yesterday why he believed Gen. William C. Westmoreland had en- gaged in a "deception" in Vietnam. Often gesturing to make a point as he spoke directly to the jurors, Ad ams said he was "'proud" to have been associated with a documentary that has made him a defendant in the libel suit. Research by Adams formed the basis of the 1982 broadcast, for which Westmoreland has sued CBS, . Adams and two other people for $120 million. Westmoreland, occasionally grin- ning disdainfully, watched from the plaintiff's table as Adams expounded on virtually every significant charge made in the broadcast. As the docu- mentary was shown on videotape to the jury, Adams explained section after section of it to the jury, citing his years of interviews and his. own personal experience. It was the first time in the 14-week trial that the jury had seen the en- tire broadcast. Westmoreland's attor- neys have played each of the pro- gram's five segments separately, but not the documentary as a whole. Yesterday was Adams' second day on the stand for questioning by an attorney for CBS. During that time the attorney, David Boies, attempted to convince the jury of the depth and accuracy of Adams' research'. and memory. Adams, a paid consultant for the broadcast, provided CBS with secret documents on Vietnam intelli-. gence, and led the network to former intelligence officers who confirmed his charges. The broadcast, The Uncounted Ene- my: A Vietnam Deception, accused Westmoreland of engaging in a"con- spiracy" in 1967 and 1968 to "de- ceive" his superiors. by minimizing estimates of enemy strength. . Again and again yesterday, Boies interrupted the playing of the broad- cast to ask Adams whether he' be- lieved before the program aired that a particular allegation was true. Each time, Adams replied gravely, "Yes sir-1 did." Asked repeatedly to explain the "basis" for his beliefs, Adams gave long, minutely detailed reconstruc- tions of his own participation in p^T!V'LF APPEARED PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER Z _A r 15 January 1985 ..Point point ex-analyst details -case -against general 300 000 he had lm osed on hit own events of 1967 and 1968 in.-Washing - intelligence officers. The disputed ton and Vietnam analyzing intelli- deceit by Westmoreland's command, gence documents, and of subsequent both Adams and the broadcast have interviews with dozens of former contended, exposed U.S. troops to CIA and military intelligence ana- added dangers. lysts from the period. He repeatedly. Based on his research, Adams said, cited specific dates and quoted con. he concluded at the memorial that versations 'verbatim, often .remind- perhaps one-third to..One-half of,the ing jurors of whenparticular_offi 45,000 casualties had been killed by cers had been promoted from bombs ,and booby-traps planted by' colonel to general. "I was there when the irregulars. "When intelligence it happened," he reminded the jury has: failed .that badly," Adams-con.: at one point.. cluded, "what failed --ought. t ~ . be ; At another point, he quoted a for- brought- to light ....so that we don't mer intelligence officer under West- repeat the same iaistakes.' c ? moreland as confessing to him in Moments-earlier, Boles asked Ad-I 1976 that he had followed orders to ams whether he had any -.regrets "cook the books" on enemy esti- about participating in the broadcast. mates: "We were wrong, Sam. Its. Hereplied: "None whatsoever. I have been on my conscience for years." no regrets because I think it accu. Adams, who will be cross-exam- rately reflected what went on" in fined tomorrow, also told the jurors Vietnam: He added:11.6m proud 'to that the research he conducted be. have been part of the broadcast. tween 1966 and 1982 included more-f Asked whether he would still join than 200 interviews and- dozens of the CIA if he "had it all to do over," government documents. Adams smiled and said. "Yep." His research and his own'-experi. Asked whether he was satisfied ence as a CIA analyst on Vietnam with the broadcast when it aired in from 1966 to 1968 convinced him, he January` 1982, Adams responded: "I said, that U.S. soldiers "were being was satisfied, first, a8_t6 its accuracy. ' killed while we were playing with Iwas satisfied its the sense that it had numbers." He said some of West- ' portrayed accurately in my view moreland's own 'intelligence offi whatrthought was the massive falsi- cers, as well as many of Adams' fel- - fication of statistics" .by Westmore- Inm ?- rte land' cnmmand _ enemy strength was as high- as 600,000 - double the 300,000 reported by Westmoreland's command. Finally, just as Westmoreland had concluded his own testimony. with. an impassioned soliloquy defending his conduct, Adams ended with an emotional defense of the broadcast and of. his own long campaign to prove a "monument of deceit", by Westmoreland's command. Leaning forward and' speaking loudly but slowly, Adams then de- scribed a visit he made last year to the .Vietnam memorial in washing. ton, D.C.: He said he had asked him-, self how many of the 45,000 U.S. sol- diers who died in Vietnam combat out of what he said were 53,022 total deaths - whose names were en- graved on the granite memorial had been-killed by enemy irregulars who Westmoreland has said posed no mil. itary threat. - The broadcast accused Westmore. land of dropping those irregulars from official estimates of enemy strength in order to keep the esti- mates under an arbitrary "ceiling" He added: "We-in intelligence, I thought, had tried to fool-the Ameri? can public. We tried to fool the Con- gress, and even to soahe extent the IJohnsonl administration, - but we ended-up, I- think,- in fooling our. selves. I thought thitithe broadcast) came to explain atleast-ipart how we had managed to lose-this war." Adams,: Sl; testified that he had become,"so convinced of Westmore. land's ."deceit" that he asked the Army inspector general.to court-mar- tial him in" 1973, When he. resigned from the CIA the.sameyear, he add. ed, he took photocopies of scores of CIA documents, burying some of them on his Virginia farm. Asked by Boles why he-had taken the documents, Adams replied: "I thought I had witnessed what I con= sidered ...'certainly the biggest scandal in military., intelligence.. American intelligence, that I was aware of. And I eras frightened. I was scared that perhaps this kind of re- cord might disappear, and'I wanted to preserve the evidence." Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/06: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807690005-0