Autopsy on a CBS "Expose"

By William A. Henry III.

The network is ambivalent in defense of a Viet Nam report

Virtually from the moment it was broadcast on Jan. 23, the CBS documentary The Uncounted Enemy: A Viet Nam Deception came under attack. The prime-time program, which featured a memorable heated interview between CBS News Correspondent Mike Wallace and retired U.S. Army General William Westmoreland, had as a central thesis the charge that in 1967 Westmoreland led a top-level military conspiracy to sustain public support for the war in Viet Nam by giving the White House gross underestimates of the size of enemy forces. Three days after the show was aired, General Westmoreland angrily denied the allegations. Other disavowals followed, including claims by senior advisers to President Lyndon Johnson that they had been well aware of debate among military and intelligence officers about the strength of the enemy. In May, TV Guide (circ. 17.7 million) published its own expose, titled "Anatomy of a Smear:

How CBS 'Got' General Westmoreland," which questioned CBS'S evidence for claiming a conspiracy and challenged the network's reportorial procedures and the integrity of its editing.

CBS reacted to the TV Guide report in a manner all but unprecedented in its history. News Division President Van Gordon Sauter launched an internal investigation to re-examine every step in the assembly of the documentary. To that task he assigned Burton Benjamin, a senior executive producer. After receiving Benjamin's report, Sauter last week wrote and released an eight-page memorandum, remarkable enough for being made public and unique for its candid admissions of error. Sauter said, "CBS News stands by this broadcast." But he then conceded that the news division had committed five substantial violations of CBS'S journalistic ground rules, plus other lapses and debatable "judgment calls," some on evidence that was pivotal to the documentary's contentions. Indeed, he labeled the very use of the word conspiracy "inappropriate." Sauter, moreover, was moved to reassert strict, traditional standards and make major changes in news division practices, including installation of what amounts to an ombudsman. Perhaps as important, Sauter pledged "the full involvement and collaboration of the principal correspondent" of each documentary from the beginning of its reporting. Over-scheduled on-air stars like Wallace often join a project after most decisions have been made. Wallace, CBS conceded, did little reporting for the Viet Nam documentary and contributed only a few interviews.

TV Guide's probers, Don Kowet and Sally Bedell (who has since joined the New York Times), were not fully satisfied. But, said Kowet, "I have to give CBS credit. It has made an enormous contribution to TV journalism by admitting mistakes and setting up an ombudsman."

The 90-min. documentary, which took 15 months and about $275,000 to prepare, was primarily the work of two people: Producer-Director-Writer George Crile, who also conducted several on-camera interviews, and Consultant Sam Adams, a former CIA analyst who was paid $25,000 to research and help shape the piece, yet who also appeared on air as a principal witness for the conspiracy theory. Crile and Adams had teamed to publish a story in Harper's magazine in 1975 along similar lines. Their CBS documentary, as Sauter's memorandum in effect conceded, let every "judgment call" go against Westmoreland. Whether by accident or design, admitted Sauter, "in two cases, journalistic oversight resulted in material relating to one set of events being connected to another [unrelated] set of events." Moreover, in violation of net work guidelines, the show's creators were guilty of "combining answers from sever al questions on the same subject into one answer."

Such distortions, unsettling enough in the abstract, in practical terms undermined Crile and Adams' often substantial case. In one instance of sleight of hand, Westmoreland was shown apparently acknowledging awareness of a meeting at the Pentagon in Washington at which military officers allegedly pared down enemy troop estimates to stay be low a ceiling of 300,000. But Westmoreland's remarks were directed to an entirely different meeting that took place in Saigon. For his part, the general has claimed that he was sandbagged by Wal lace and Crile, that he was not informed in detail about what he would be asked until he arrived in New York City for an interview, and that, unprepared, he was confronted by Wallace, the beneficiary of months of staff research, about events dating back some 15 years. When Westmoreland later sent documents and what he considered a "correction" to his recollections about the rate of guerrilla infiltration, CBS made what Sauter called "a judgmental decision" to ignore the added data. CBS did not go back to Westmore land as part of its internal investigation.

Says Westmoreland of the Sauter report:

"Just a whitewash. If it hadn't been for TV Guide, this whole mess would have remained under the rug."

Sauter's report treads gingerly when it comes to assessing blame; indeed, none of the staffers who worked on the documentary are cited by name. Says Sauter:

"Ours is a collaborative medium. The deficiencies of this broadcast fall on the organization." Asked the fate of Producer Crile, he says only: "George Crile remains at CBS. He is working on another documentary now." Crile insists: "There is nothing in this broadcast I am ashamed of." Wallace agrees: "Those of us who know this show stand by it without reservations." However, CBS executives plainly do not. They plan a future broadcast on the alleged Viet Nam "deception."Explained Sauter in announcing his moves: "The greatest asset of CBS News is its credibility. Protecting that credibility is the most important thing we do." Last week the CBS eye seemed to blink in embarrassment.

-- By William A. Henry III.

Reported by Bruce van Voorst/New York

With reporting by BRUCE VAN VOORST

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