EX-C.I.A. ANALYST TAKES STAND FOR CBS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000707150097-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 13, 2010
• Sequence Number: 97
• Publication Date: January 11, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2010/08/13: CIA-RDP9O-00552ROO0707150097-7
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11 January 1985
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By M. A. FARBER
Samuel A. Adams, whose thesis that
the military had lied about enemy
strength estimates in the Vietnam War
formed the basis for a disputed CBS
documentary, took the stand yesterday
in the Westmoreland-CBS libel trial
and told of the long road that led him to
believe the underestimates placed
American soldiers in jeopardy.
The testimony by Mr. Adams, who
contributed years of research and
scores of contacts to CBS as a paid con-
sultant during the preparation in 19811
of "The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam
Deception," is considered crucial to
the network's fortunes in the $120 mil-
lion suit brought against it by Gen. Wil-
liam C. Westmoreland.
"Did you believe," Mr. Adams was
asked yesterday by David Boles, the
lawyer for CBS, that a dispute over
enemy strength in Vietnam in 1967,
"was just in good faith?"
No, said Mr. Adams, "I had reached
the conclusion at that point that there
had been a deception." -
The 51-year-old former analyst for
the Central Intelligence Agency was
called as the first "live" witness by
lawyers for the network, who had
opened their defense of the 1982 broad-
cast this week by reading depositions
from other intelligence analysts into
the record in Federal District Court in
Manhattan.
Mr. Adams, who has devoted nearly
two decades to proving his thesis, ini-
tially seemed exuberant as he recalled
dodging bullets in Vietcong-controlled
countryside and learning "the sanctity
of evidence" he unearthed in reports of
prisoner interrogations and captured
enemy documents.
He remembered "bumping around
the hot, dusty" province of Long An in
1966 in a pickup truck, compiling infor.
mation in French, the only language he
shared with a Vietnamese translator.
He remembered in, minute detail, the
times and dates and circumstances in
1967 in which he came to feel that the
military had decided to camouflage the
real might of the enemy.
And for a man who will soon be por-
trayed on cross-examination as both
mistaken and "obsessed," Mr. Adams
appeared guileless under questioning
by David Boles, the lawyer for CBS.
Q. When you traveled to Vietnam
in January of 1966, what did you do
when you arrived?
A. 1 got off the airplane.
At one point, as General Westmore-
land looked on without expression, Mr.
Adams described Vietcong defectors
as "these gentlemen." At another
stage he discoursed on a "band of
Havana Cubans" he had monitored
and, at yet another, he lingered over
the marriage of two junior C.I.A. col-
leagues.
"Maybe," said Mr. Boles, as Judge
Pierre N. Leval smiled, "you ought to
stick to the hierarchy and not get into
the marital aspects."
As his testimony wore on, however,
Mr. Adams grew as somber as most of
the witnesses who preceded him since
the trial began Oct. 9.
Mr. Boies asked Mr. Adams wheth-
er, in describing the military's position
in a memorandum on enemy strength
around the time of the'1968 Tet offen-
sive, he had used the ;;words "monu-
ment of deceit."
"That is correct, sir," Mr. Adams re-
plied.
Q. That wasn't something that was
manufactured or fabricated in the
1970's or the 1980's?
A. No, sir, it was not.
General Westmoreland commanded
United States forces in Vietnam from
1964 to 1968.
The documentary charged that, for
political and public-relations reasons,
his command had "conspired" to "sup-
press and alter" vital data on the size
and fighting capacity of the enemy,
mainly by deleting the Vietcong's part-
time, hamlet-based self-defense units
from the order of battle, the official
military listing of enemy strength.
General Westmoreland contends that
CBS defamed him by saying he deliber-
ately misled President Lyndon B.
Johnson and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
He denies charges made by the broad-
cast that he imposed an "arbitrary
ceiling" of 300,000 on enemy strength
l
and ignored reports by intelligence offi-
cers of a larger Vietcong presence and f
a higher rate of North Vietnamese infil-
tration than he made known.
To prevail in his suit, the general 1
must prove both that the program was
false and that CBS knew that or acted
with "reckless disregard" of its truth.
Besides CBS, the defendants at the I
trial are Mr. Adams; George Crile, the
producer of the documentary, and
Mike Wallace, its narrator.
Before Mr. Adams took the stand,
Mr. Boles played for the jury a video ,~
make any sense." - '.
Later in 1966, at C.I.A. headquarters,;
Mr. Adams said, he examined some.'-,"-
captured enemy documents for Binh
Dinh province and soon concluded that
the number of guerrillas and self-de-
fense forces for all of South Vietnam was probably triple. the 112,000 in the '._
order of battle. And the enemy's total."*'
force, he decided, was at least twice the
figure of 280,000 then used by General;:
Westmoreland's command.
"I went running around C.I.A. head-i
quarters, telling people about the prob-; -' .
lem," he testified. "Something waa-
radically wrong with the order of bat-:
>
tle."
Mr. Adams said key analysts for the
military in Saigon agreed with him; -;
and appeared, by mid-1967, on the
verge of substantially raising the over=
all estimate in the order of battle. But,-..
to his dismay and newfound "suspi-
cion," he testified, such a move was=
successfully opposed by senior mem
bers of General Westmoreland's com-
mand throughout that year.
agreement over enemy strength in 1967
- in which Mr. Adams and some other
C.I.A. analysts favored an estimate".;
twice the size of the 298,000 proposed by
the military - was "anything but just
a fight over numbers."
"It was the G.I.'s out there who had
to fight these people, so it was terribly
important to them," he said. "There
Approved For Release 2010/08/13: CIA-RDP9O-00552ROO0707150097-7