CRILE DENIES HE 'MADE UP' SEQUENCE IN CBS FILM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000707160012-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 12, 2010
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: December 14, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2010/08/12 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000707160012-9
NEV YORK TIP'S
14 December 1984
C rile Denies He `Made Up'
Sequence. in CBS Film
By M. A. FARBER
George Crile, the producer of a dis-
puted CBS documentary on the Viet-
nam War, was accused in court yester-
day of fabricating a part of the pro-
gram that dealt with a supposed
,.over-up" of enemy strength statis-
tics after the Tet offensive of January
1968.
After four hours of close questioning
about intelligence gathering and com-
puter memories, Dan M. Burt, the law-
y~r for General William C. Westmore-
land, suddenly raised his voice and
asked:
"Mr. Crile, you just made up the
whole data-base sequence in the broad-
cast, didn't you?"
"Mr. Burt, that is not true," the y'it-
ness shot back, his own voice tinged
with emotion. "I have explained to you
the sources of that sequence."
'One of the sources, he underscored,
was Comdr. James Meacham, an intel-
ligence officer in Saigon who, accord-
ing to evidence in the case, often wrote
to his wife of the "gargantuan false-
hoods" and "mesmerizing lies" in-
volved in his work and of how enemy
strength estimates had to "come- out
the way the general wanted them to."
Fifth Day of Testimony
Mr. Crile was testifying,for the fifth
day at General Westmoreland's libel
trial against CBS in Federal District
Court. The general's $120 million suit
stems from the documentary, "The
Upcounted Enemy: A Vietnam Decep-
tion," produced by Mr. Crile in 1982. '
;Yesterday, as Mr. Burt continued his
assault on the accuracy and objectivity
of the program, he brought out that Mr.
Crile had helped to unlock the "mental
block" of a key participant in the
broadcast, Col. Gains Hawkins, by giv-
ing him information before his on-cam-
era interview and had secretly tape re-
corded telephone conversations with
two others, Commander Meacham and
Col. Russell Cooley.
In July 1983, Mr. Crile was suspended
by CBS for a year for having taped
without authorization a number of tele-
phone'-conversations during the prepa-
ration of the Vietnam broadcast, in-
cluding one with Robert S. McNamara,
the former Secretary of Defense. The
names of Colonel Cooley and Com-
ri}ander Meacham, who is now the mili-
tary correspondent of The Economist,
the British magazine, did not emerge
then.
'The network's policy required that
the interviewee, or the president of
CBS News, grant permission for such
tang.
pi Crile testified yesterday that he
used the tape recorder simply as a
"backup" to his notes or his memory,
particularly when he was discussing
complicated subjects.
And he denied that he had told Colo-
nel Hawkins, a former military intelli-
gence officer who informed CBS that
he had "arbitrarily reduced" enemy
strength estimates in 1967, what to say
during interviews in 1981.
'An Act of Courage'
"I don't think, Mr. Burt, that you tell
someone like Colonel Hawkins that you
want him to come forward and make
acknowledgments that are deeply em-
barrassing to him," Mr. Crile said.
"That is an act of courage on his part
and it was an enormous self-sacrifice.
It is not in any way involved in being
able to suggest to him what he should
say. These are very major decisions
that people of this caliber make."
Q. Did you offer to help General
Westmoreland. refresh his memory
before you interviewed him, sir?
A. Yes, I did, Mr. Burt. I spoke to
General Westmoreland on two occa-
sions and I wrote him a very specific
letter and I read that letter out to him
on the telephone the week before and
I had conversations with him about
these subjects, and I will be very
happy to go into it in as much length
as you would like.
Mr. Burt resumed his questioning
about Colonel Hawkins's "mental
block" regarding a six-week period be-
fore the colonel left Vietnam in Sep-
tember 1967.
But, later,, he questioned Mr.' Crile
about a letter and package of official
records that General Westmoreland
had sent the producer in June 1981, sev-
eral weeks after Mike Wallace, the
narrator of the Vietnam documentary,
had interviewed him.
The Repeated Assertion
The materials, according to Mr.
Burt, concerned the repeated assertion
by General Westmoreland during the
interview that North Vietnamese infil-
tration into South Vietnam in the fall of
1967 had been approximately 20,000 a
month - much as the documentary
would contend, from other sources as
well, when it was broadcast in January
1982.
But in 1967, when the general was in-,
terviewed on "Meet the Press," he had
put the figure at roughly 5,000 to 6,000.
And, with the letter to Mr. Crile- a let-
ter in which he described his session
with Mr. Wallace as being "more of an
inquisition than a rational interview"
- the general included records that
showed infiltration to have been at the,
lower level he portrayed it in 1967.
Now, Mr. Burt suggested that Mr.
Crile had deliberately ignored General
Westmoreland's materials and "cor-
rection."
"On the contrary, Mr. -Burt," Mr.
Crile said, "there was no statement
anywhere in it that he had made a mis-
take and no request for a correction.
There was no alert whatever that he in-
tended to change his repeated state-
ments in the interview. All he said was
that there were some documents that
he said might be of interest to us."
Mr. Burt introduced a note Mr. Crile
sent to Mr. Wallace after receiving the
materials, in which the producer said
"Westmoreland doesn't bring anything
to our attention that is particularly
relevant. Certainly nothing that causes
concern and requires a new look at any-
thing we have been asserting."
General Westmoreland was com-
mander of American forces in Vietnam
from January 1964 to June 1968. In his
suit, he contends that CBS defamed
him by saying that he had deceived
President Lyndon B. Johnson and the
Joint Chiefs of Staff about the size and
nature of the enemy in the year before
the Tet offensive.
The broadcast alleged a "conspir-
acy" in General Westmoreland's com-
mand to minimize the strength of the
enemy to make it appear that the
United States was winning "a war of
attrition." As a result of this "con-
scious effort," it said, the President
and other senior officials in Washing-
ton, as well as American forces in Viet-
nam, were left "totally unprepared"
for the widespread attack in January
1968.
One of the five sections of the 90-
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minute documentary also covered
what Mr. Wallace and Mr. Crile called
an attempt, after the offensive, to "al-
ter" or "tamper with" the "historical
record" of enemy strength contained in
a computer at military intelligence
headquarters in Saigon. Because the
estimates of enemy strength had been
kept low in 1967, and the i asualties at
Tet were so high, Mr. Wallace said,
General Westmoreland's command
was faced with the question: "Whom,
are we fighting?"
The documentary showed interviews
with Commander Meacham and Colo-
nel Cooley, whom Mr. Wallace said -
and Mr. Crile reiterated yesterday -
had "in effect" accused another intelli-
gence officer, Lt. Col. Daniel Graham,
of "personally engineering a cover-up"
of the real size of the enemy. Colonel
Graham, who later became a lieuten-
ant general and head of the Defense In-
telligence Agency, appeared briefly on
the broadcast to deny the charge.
Yesterday, Mr. Burt brought out that
Colonel Graham's superior, Maj. Gen.
Phillip B. Davidson Jr. was present
during the discussions in the spring of
1968 about "resetting" enemy strength.
The lawyer also tried to show that noth-
ing in the episode was "dishonest."
Mr. Burt played for the jury unused
portions of the Meacham and Cooley in-
terviews with Mr. Crile in 1981, in''
which Commander Meacham denied'
"faking any intelligence" or knowing
of any such efforts and Colonel Cooley
indicated that a "question of honesty"
was not at issue.
Mr. Crile, who will continue testify-
ing when court resumes on Monday, re-
plied that Colonel Cooley's remarks
were being taken out of context. The
producer said that Commander
Meacham had never "disavowed"
what he had written to his wife from
Saigon. But, when CBS . interviewed
him in London 15 years later, Mr. Crile
said, the commander got "cold feet."
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