CBC WITNESS LINKS U.S. LOSSES TO VIETNAM SELF -DEFENSE FORCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000301930004-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 21, 2012
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: January 23, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/21: CIA-RDP90-00965R000301930004-5
THE NEW YORK TIMES
23 January, 1985
CBS Witness Links U.S. Losses to
L-\
Vietnam Self-Defense Force
"r By M. A. FARBER
George W. Allen, a former deputy
' chief of Vietnamese affairs for the Cen-
tral Intelligence Agency, testified yes-
terday that the Vietcong's self-defense
? forces may have been responsible for
as much as "40 percent of American
:_losses" in Vietnam.
Mr. Allen, who is 58 years old, took
..the stand in Federal District Court in ?
Manhattan as the second witness for
.CBS in the $120 million libel trial
brought by Gen. William C. Westmore-
land against the network.
The suit stems from a 1982 CBS docu-
mentary that charged a "conspiracy"
? by the general's command to minimize
the true size and nature of enemy
strength in South Vietnam in the year
;- before the Tel offensive of January
1968. The broadcast ? "The Uncounted
--Enemy: A Vietnam Deception" ? ac-
cused the military of deliberately dis-
torting enemy capabilities by deleting
the Vietcong's self-defense units from
the official listing of -forces known as
the order of battle. -
Mr. Allen, who appeared on the docu-
mentary, is regarded as a particularly
important witness for the network.
A_ Both George Crile, the producer of the
e'r broadcast, and Samuel A. Adams, a
former C.I.A. analyst who was a paid
consultant for the program, have told
' the jury that Mr. Allen was the "dean"
on Vietnamese issues. Mr. Allen him-
:self said yesterday that he had more
experience on Indochinese matters as
an American intelligence officer ?
- more than 17 years ? than any other
? person, civilian or military.
'Concept' Twisted
On the documentary, Mr. Allen said
the removal of the "paramilitary" self-
defense forces from the order of battle
twisted "our concept" of the war.
_ "We were skewing our strategy," he
said on the broadcast. "We were not ac-
knowledging that indeed there was an
important indigenous South Vietnam-
ese component; that, indeed, it was a
. civil war."
- Mr. Allen followed Mr. Adams to the
stand around 4:15 P.M. yesterday, an
-hour before court adjourned. Mr.
Adams completed his testimony by re-
-calling his many years of efforts to
bring to light what he called the "em-
barrassing but significant" story of
military "deception" in Vietnam.
Mr. Adams said the military's "dis-
honest" position regarding enemy
strength in 1967 was the "kind of thing
that people want to put out of their
mind.
"It was the kind of thing people al-
most have to confess to," he said, tell-
ing of his repeated attempts to pry the
story loose from former military intel-
ligence officers and to acquire infor-
mation that was still in classified docu-
ments.
Senior C.I.A. Analyst
Mr. Allen ? who served as a senio
? analyst at the C.I.A.'s station in Saigo
' from 1964 to 1966, when he became
- deputy head of the agency's Vietnam
ese affairs staff at Langley, Va. ? said
he had been Mr. Adams's "mentor on
--order of battle problems since we first
,--met" in January 1966. At that time, Mr
? Adams had worked for six months of a
two-and-a-half year assignment on the
' Vietnamese affairs staff.
"I sometimes wished I had the cour-
age of my convictions as Sam had,"
Mr. Allen told the jury. "I regard Mr.
Adams as one having an unusually high
sense of professional integrity."
Mr. Allen said that Mr. Adams's in-
tegrity "was commensurate with the
biblical passage engraved in the en-
? trance to C.I.A. headquarters ? 'Ye
shall know the truth and the truth shall
make you free.'"
- Earlier in this trial, George Carver,
the chief of that C.I.A. unit, testified for
-.General Westmoreland and portrayed
Mr. Adams as someone who was "sel-
dom in doubt, often in error."
General Westmoreland, who com-
manded United States forces in Viet-
nam from January 1964 to June 1968,
contends that CBS defamed him by
saying he had lied to President Lyndon
...B. Johnson and the Joint Chiefs of Staff
-.about enemy strength in 1967.
- ? Arbitrary Ceiling
e documentary specifically
Charged that General Westmoreland
had imposed an "arbitrary ceiling" on
-reports of enemy strength, mainly by
:-the-deletion of the part-time, hamlet-
-based self-defense forces from the or-
'tier_ of battle, and had disregarded re-
.ports from his officers of a higher Viet-
cong presence and a higher rate of
North Vietnamese infiltration than was
made known.
- General Westmoreland testified that
he removed the self-defense forces ?
??then newly estimated at 120,000 ? be. they were inconsequential mili-
and various intelligence agencies, Mr.
r Adams and some C.I.A. colleagues un-
fl successfully opposed the deletion of the
self-defense forces in the order of bat-
- tie. But it was not until early 1973,.
shortly before he resigned from the
C.I.A., that Mr. Adams first publicly
accused the military of willful decep-
tion.
Besides being used for the order of
I battle, the enemy strength figures set-
tied upon in late 1967 were useil fora 25-
page special intelligence estimate for
President Johnson and other senior of-
ficials. That document?which listed a
total enemy military strength of 223,000
to 248,000 ? said, in a paragraph, that
the self-defense forces might have
numbered 150,000 in 1966 and, though
declining and not "offensive military
forces,' still "constitute a part of the
overall Communist effort."_ ?
Yesterday, on re-direct examination
by David Boies, a lawyer for CBS, Mr.
Adams said that document was "not an
honest statement" of full enemy
strength.
But his interpretation was chal-
lenged on re-cross examination by
David Dorsen, a lawyer for General
Westmoreland.
Q. Are you suggesting that people
like Secretary of Defense McNamara
would not be aware that self-defense
forces were not in the strength
totals?
A. I believe he might be aware, but
if he read that paragraph he wouldn't
get a proper idea of what those peo-
ple did.
When Mr. Dorsen suggested that Mr.
Adams had "mixed feelings" about de-
scribing the self-defense units as "mili-
tary," Mr. Adams said that "para..
military" might be an acceptable term
but that he never doubted the need to
include them in enemy strength totals.
Mr. Allen testified that the self-de-
fense forces "were responsible for
sniper fire, preparing booby traps and
terrorist-type grenades and sometimes
they would actually engage in a fire-
fight." He said they were killing South
Vietnamese and American troops "and
were terrorizing civilians. They were
an integral part of the enemy's mili-
tary strength."
He said he recalled_ "figures as_hizh
as 40 percent of American losses being
inflicted by militia self-defense ele-
ments." .
Mr. Allen, who said he wai one of a
dozen intelligence analysts who de-
vised the first American order of battle
for enemy forces in Vietnam in 1962,
said he agreed with Mr. Adams that the
military's position on -enerny strength
figures five years later was not "in
good faith."
tarily and their inclusion In the order of
battle at a high figure would mislead
Washington and the press. He said he
also wanted, in 1967, to "purify" the or-
der of battle by "separating the fight-
ers" ? such as North Vietnamese
regulars and Vietcong guerrillas --, r
from what he called the "nonfighters,'
such as the self-defense units.
At a series of conferences in 1967 be- 1
tween representatives of the military i
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/21: CIA-RDP90-00965R000301930004-5