Unfriendly Fire

More ammo for a libel suit

General William Westmoreland's $120 million libel suit against CBS News is not scheduled to come to trial until fall, but both sides are already in full cry. Last week Westmoreland held his third press conference on the dispute to brandish a 5-Ib. packet of testimony, which he said debunks the network's January 1982 documentary The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception. CBS hit back at a news conference 20 minutes later, 100 yards away in the same Washington hotel, with its own 1 1/4lb. sheaf of affidavits. Neither side uncovered a "smoking gun," but each embarrassed the other, CBS by releasing accusations from Westmoreland's aides, the general by exposing a damning memo from the show's producer, George Crile.

The documentary in effect accused the former U.S. military commander in South Viet Nam of joining in "a conspiracy at the highest levels of military intelligence" to underreport enemy troop strength in the months before the 1968 Tet offensive, in order to persuade other officials, and the public, that victory was in sight. Westmoreland says there was no conspiracy but a debate within Government over whether to count sympathizers as part of enemy forces. To support his position, Westmoreland last week submitted the 5 Ibs. of documents as evidence in a New York federal court. Sworn statements from Viet Nam-era officials, including Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, CIA Director Richard Helms and National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, declared that they were aware of the debate.

The general also produced a memo in which Crile counseled Interviewer Mike Wallace, "Now all you have to do is break General Westmoreland, and we have this whole thing aced." Crile, who has been suspended since June for having secretly taped a telephone interview with McNamara, explained: "I was trying to tell Mike that he had to be prepared so that Westmoreland could not stonewall us."

CBS claimed to have "conclusive documentation of the factual assertions made in the broadcast," which it too introduced in court. Subordinate officials of the CIA and the Pentagon asserted that they had indeed lowered pre-Tet estimates of enemy strength, under explicit or implied orders from Westmoreland's command team. Retired Army Major General Joseph McChristian suggested that Westmoreland may have sidetracked a cable about troop strength after saying it could be a "political bombshell." Said McChristian: "Although I usually sent my reports directly to Washington, General Westmoreland told me to leave it with him. I do not know what happened to the cable."