'HONEST MIKE'S' DOCUMENTARY LEMON

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000707160154-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 12, 2010
• Sequence Number: 154
• Publication Date: June 15, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/12 :CIA-RDP90-005528000707160154-2
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M. STAIV'PON EVANS
THE WASHINGTON TLS
15 June 198
`Honest Mike's'
documentary lemon
In its special program a few months
back on Gen. William Westmoreland,
CBS-TV professed to give us some
hard-nosed investigative journalism. In
its expose of the network's incredible
bias in concocting that report, TV Guide
delivers the genuine article.
As TV Guide's reporters spell it'out,
the CBS attack on Westmoreland was a
premeditated hatchet job in which the
conclusions were written in advance,
dictating the course of the whole
inquiry. Facts, assertions and rebuttals
that didn't fit the predetermined pat?
tern were simply excluded from the
program.
The thrust of the CBS Special, "The
Uncounted Enemy: A Vietman Decep-
rion," was that Gen. Westmoreland,
commander of our forces in Vietnam,
had suppressed intelligence data
showing a substantial enemy buildup
prior to the Tet Offensive of 1%8. The
object of this deception,~supposedly,
was to make our strategy of attrition
look good -with the unintended con-
sequence of misleading authorities on
the homefront about the dangers we
confronted.
The CBS story was primarily based
on the theories of a former CIA opera-
tive who believed so-called "self-
defense" forces of the communists,
including women, children and the eld-
erly, should have been included in the
enemy force estimates, and that a con-
spiracy was afoot to prevent this from
happening. This notion, the magazine
shows, was planted in the CBS project
from the beginning. The words "con-
spiracy" and "conspirators" appear
' M. Stanton Evans is director of the
National Journalism Center as welt as
a syndicated columnist.
repeatedly in the program outline sub-
miffed to CBS at the outset.
The interviews conducted, and the
use made of them, conformed completel y
to this original format. For instance,
the top U.S. intelligence official in
Vietnam, who would have known about
any such deception by Westmoreland,
was never interviewed. Nor, he says,
did the network make any effort to get
in touch with him. Others who did get
interviewed but disagreed with CBS's
pre-conceived thesis wound up on the
cutting-room floor.
A glaring example in this category
is Walt W. Rostow, s top adviser to Pt'es-
ident Johnson at the tithe of the Tet
Offensive. Rostow had athree-hour
interview with CBS in which he pointed
art that the debate over enemy strength
in Vietnam was well known in govern-
ment,.that the issue was in honest dis-
agreement over what kind of forces
should be counted as fighting units,
and that the full range of estimates on
such matters was known to the White
House.
"President Johnson," said Rostow,
"was fully aware of the Viet Cong order
of battle debate, at the center of the
CBS documentary...it was precisely
because order of battle estimates were
so inherently difficult that we relied
on the widest range of intelligence:'
The charge that LBJ was mislead by
Westmoreland, says Rostow, "is false;
and those who produced the documen-
taryknew itwas false" - since he had
told them so at considerable length.
Not one word of Rostow's three-hour
interview on this subject was included
in the CBS documentary. All too clearly,
what he had to say didn't fit with the.
preconceived notions of the producers.
Similar treatment was accorded Lt.
Gen. Daniel Graham, r,ccused of helping
Westmoreland suppress intelligence
data. The outspoken and highly quot-
able Graham was interviewed for 90
minutes - 20 seconds of which actu-
ally made it on the air.
Even worse, if possible, was the way ,
Westmoreland himself was handled.
The CBS letter to him before his inter-
view indicated the subject was to be
intelligence matters generally -with
an illusion to the order~f-battle dis-
pute casually tucked in far down the
list. Westmoreland was told nothing up
front about the charges to be aired
against him, while CBS was conniving
with his critics to perfect them.
Among other revelations, TV Guide
tells us that CBS had its star witness
against Westmoreland flown to New
York and prepped on the questions he
would be asked by Mike Wallace - in
violation of the network's own guide-
lines. When Wallace conducted this
interview he did so on an entirely
friendly basis, drawing out the charges
against Westmoreland. The magazine
points out still other inaccuracies and
problems lathe CB Sspecial - suggest-
ing that, while there are plenty of things
to criticize about our strategy in
Vietnam, this emphatically wasn't it.
TV Guide's disclosures confirm the
earlier charges on this subject made
by Accuracy in Media, Rostow's state-
ment io the New York Times and the
rebuttals offered by Gens. Graham and
Westmoreland. The net weight of the
evidence indicates that the "deceprion"
in this broadcast was committed -not
countered - by CBS.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/12 :CIA-RDP90-005528000707160154-2