...IN THE NAME OF REVENGE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201200018-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 19, 2012
• Sequence Number: 18
• Publication Date: February 21, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/19: CIA-RDP96
"T-'L ~n ~CAZCD
.Rich and Cohen
Ldp !
I
The William Westmoreland-CBS trial was a once a domino. The red on the map had gone
jungle thick with metaphors about-the Viet- from Russia to China to- North Vietnam and
nam War itself. As with the war, Westmore- was threatening to seep down into South Viet-
land miscounted the . enemy, didn't realize Ham. If it fell, so would the rest of Asia and,
-until too late that he was outlawyered and eventually, San Francisco, or at least Oakland.
then, in the spirit of the late Sen. George But now China and Vietnam fight a border
. Aiken's advice about bow to end the conflict, war and, through proxies, another in Cambodia.
:called his defeat ..a mighty victory-and got ; -China. and the Soviet Union -are feuding rela-
--the hell out, -: ~ tives, related to Karl Marx in whose name they
But once again the stab-in the-back accusa-. from time to time pummel one another. The
'tion has surfaced. 'This time'-the hand that dominoes have collapsed from the center, tak-
held the ? dagger -was not the press's,-'but'. dng the theory with it. The war was for nothing.: ?
Westmoreland's "disloyal" subordinates who- And so was the'Westmoreland suit. It, too,.
.sided with CBS. By name and rank they. were was predicated on an ideological fixation: The
-Gen. Joseph A. McChristian and Col. Gains B.'_ .press lies. It supposedly does so because it's
tHawkins. As for their-number;' Westmoreland excessively "liberal. - vaguely un-American.
said he had it. The disloyal McChristian had a ,.Burt, et al., may -insist otherwise, but that
!"vendetta against",him and Hawkins was was their premise and their purpose was to
"disgruntled" and amenable to brainwashing. expose-the lie-to bloody the press. .How else
But it was Westmoreland's lawyer, Dan M. can you explain Westmoreland's evident
i.Burt,who was quickest to propound revisionist shock when he found that his former subordi--
:.doctrine: "We came here to clear the name of a nates were willing to say on the witness stand
general That is what I, in my heart, believe we what they had said in the CBS documentary.
have done." , My God! You mean it was not all done in the
Hardly-although Westmoreland himself editing booth? You mean these men had actu-
came away with something. He managed to ally said what CBS aired?
-picture himself as the Army's oldest. Lone-. - . The be was not. there. The more Burt and
some.
End, abandoned once in the field by his., his colleagues .hacked through the jungle of
country, a second time by disloyal subordi- depositions = ' and witnesses, documents and
Hates and, finally, by his once-cocky lawyers. memos, the more they realized that they were
All through ? the trial, he conducted himself ' like pious explorers of antiquity searching for
In_the Name of Revenge
,with dignity, humor and even warmth. His-
;tory cannot dismiss a general who took the
subway to court.
Still, Burt's statement is a bit hard to take.
Neither he,' nor .the Capital Legal Foundation
for which he, works, nor the reactionary rich
who amply endow it, cared primarily about
"the name of a general. They cared instead
about the press, about its alleged bias, about
WASHINGTON POST
21 February 1985
the mythical land of Gog and Magog. They fol-
lowed a map showing things not as they are,
but as they thought they ought to be. They are
not alone. Sen. Jesse Helms, for instance,
thinks that if only he can buy CBS he can, in the
process, buy a truth that conforms to his be-
liefs. The truth exists for no one.
- As Westmoreland knows, old soldiers never
die and neither, really, do controversies over
the way they think it sold out America during wars. For that reason, it would have been best
the Vietnam War. Westmoreland may be if CBS has done what Westy and others always
their hero, but.in the end be was to be their wanted the United States to do in Vietnam--
vehicle. The name of this game was revenge, press on to victory no matter what the cost.
This was another Vietnam metaphor. Here That way both sides could not claim, as they did
were America's press haters on their own futile' immediately after-halting the trial, that they
4eard~and-destroy mission. Here they were,. both won.
Like America itself in the 1950s, '60s and '70s, . Unfortunately, the-final Vietnam metaphor
subsail)ing to a false theory, looking for' an . ' : is in the outcome. -Once_` t:gain, you can make
.-enemy that jras not there,. Vietnam itself was what you want of
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, Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201200018-1