WESTMORELAND-CBS TRIAL, A RUNNING BATTLE OVER STATISTICS AND CREDIBILITY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000707160053-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 12, 2010
• Sequence Number: 53
• Publication Date: November 28, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2010/08/12 :CIA-RDP90-005528000707160053-4
NF~~' YORK TIrFS
28 Nover^ber 1984
Westmoreland-CBS Trial, a Running
Battle Over Statistics and Credibility
,,
+ By M. A. FARBER _ _ 1~
.., _,__ _, -,. To the general, who commanded
i~egtmoreland-CBS libel trial has been
.Faired in a running battle over static-
', particularly with regard to esti-
mates of enemy strength in South Viet'
~ aim in the year before the Tet offen-
r~ ~ a slue of January 1968.
But this week, perhaps
- ~ News more than at any time dui-
?;llnalysis ing the eight-week= old
- trial u1 Federal Court in
? ' Manhattan, the paper war
has been moved to the front line in what
. appears to be a major -and unantici-
? paled -engagement ~tween Gen.
' ~'Villiam C. Westmoreland and David
Boles, the CBS lawyer who is cross-ex-'
;amining the 70-year-0Id general in his
5120 million suit against the network.
.-The latest conflict began Monday.
and is .expected to resume on Thurs-
day, if General Westmoreland returns
to the stand then. The general, who
.began his testimony on Nov. 15, com-
plained of back pain on Monday night'
and was excused from testifying yes-
terday, or today.
'Ostensibly, the new Conflict revolves
around a set of three numbers for
enemy strength that General West-
moreland provided President Johnson
in November 1967. But more than the
numbers themselves -how they wet$
arrived at and what they revealed or
obspured -the issue is General West-
moreland's credibility.
American troops in Vietnam from 1964
to 1968, the numbers reflected his com-
mend's best estimate of the size of the
North Vietnamese and Vietcong-forces
in South Vietnam. And if they seemed
unusually low, in relation to other fig-
ures gathered previously by the com-
mand, that was only "coincidence."
To Mr. Boles, who suggested that the
numbers supplied President Johnson
were deliberately misleading, the gen-
. eral's explanation was another obfus-
cation; another example of haw static-
; tics were manipulated in Saigon to put
abetter face on the course of the war.
Whatever the case, General West-
moreland gave testimony that was in
sharp contrast to the testimony of the
first witness on his behalf -Walt W.
Rostow, President Johnson's special
assistant for national security affairs.
And Mr. Boles, who do other occasions
has snared the general in discrepancies
between his testimony and eazlier
statements by him, was making the
most of the development.
But whether the new conflict will be
resolved for the jury, or the public, re-
mains to be seen. Perhaps the one per-
son who could do most to support, or
undermine, General Westmoreland's
testimony -his former military Intel-.
ligence chief, Maj. Gen. Phillip B.
Davidson Jr. -has ah-eady appeared
on the stand, and was not questioned
about the figures that went to President
Johnson. It is considered unlikely that
he will be recalled.
Another person who might have
helped clarify the matter was EIIs-
worth Bunker. the United States Am-
bassador in Saigon in 1967. But Mr.
Bunker died last September.
General Westmoreland contends
CBS defamed him in a 1982 CBS Re-
ports documentary, "The Uncounted
Enemy: A Vietnam Deception," by
saying that he had deceived the Presi-
dent and the Joint Chiefs of Staff about.
the size and nature of the enemy in
South Vietnam in 1967. CBS says the
broadcast was true.
The documentary alleged a "conspir-
acy" at the "highest levels" of military
intelligence to minimize enemy
strength to make it appear that Amer-
ica was winning the waz. A "tactic" of
General Westmoreland, it said, was to
insist, in mid-1967, on the removal of
the Vietcong's self-defense forces from
the official listing of enemy strength
known as the order of battle.
The general has testified that he fa-
vored the deletion of the self-defense
forces because they posed no offensive
military threat. -
Inmid-November 1967 General West-
moreland was called home by Presi-
dent Johnson. He was accompanied to
Washington by Ambassador Bunker.
At a White House briefing, the-the
~i~ President was shown three figures that
~ represented the general's estimate of
~'ONTLNUED.'
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total enemy strength in South Vietnam
for the third quarters of 1965, 1966 and
1967. The number for 1965 was 207,000;
for 1966,285,000; and for 1967, 242,000.
When Mr. Rostov testified on Oct. 16,
he was asked by Mr. Boles whether the
figure of 285,000 for 1966 included the
self~lefense forces. Mr. Rostov said it
did. And he said it was his "under-
standing" that the figure of 242,000 for
1967 was reached by not canting those
units, which, by then, had been re-
moved from the order of battle. "The
President," Mr. Rostov testified, "was
aware of that."
General Westmoreland. however,
testified on Monday that the self-de-
fense forces had been taken att of the.
totals for 1965 and 1966. Added into the
figut~s for 1965 and 1966 was another
category of enemy strength- adminis-
trative service troops -that, he said,
was not included in the order of battle
'before 1967.
General Westmoreland said it was
all part of a "retroactive adjustment"
done by General Davidson before he
and Ambassador Bunker left for Wash-
ington. Mr. Rostov, he said, had testi-
fied "inaccurately" and Mr. Boles sim-
ply "didn't understand" the figures.
When Mr. Boles noted that another
intelligence estimate made by General
Westmoreland's command in August
1966 placed total enemy .strength at
282,452 -including the self-defense
tortes -the general said the similarity
between that figure and the figure
given president Johnson for 1966 was
`.strictly coincidental."
At his pre-trial deposition, General
Westmoreland said he could not recall
ever discussing enemy strength esti-
mates with President Johnson. Gen-
eral Davidson was not asked at his
deposition, or at the trial, about the fig-
ures given Mr. Johnson because, until
General Westmoreland's testimony, ,
lawyers for CBS were unaware of any
supposed involvement by the former
military intelligence chief.
While it may be a matter of seman-
tics, the "administrative . sers+ice"
forces that General Westmoreland re-
ferred to on the stand appear to be the
same forces as a "combat support"
category that was, indeed, included in
the order of battle in 1966. General
Westmoreland himself, in 1966, men-
tioned that category when estimating
enemy strength.
Moreover, Mr. Rostcw said in his
pre-trial deposition that General West-
moreland's command in 1967 had been
unable to perform the kind of "retro-
spective" analysis that General West-
moreland now attributes to General
Davidson.
"You know," Mr. Rostov told Mr.
Boles in the deposition on Oct. 13, "they
did not do a retrospective estimate.
They said it -was impossible."
Q. MACV [General Westmore-
land's command] said it was impos-
sible?
A. MACV said it was impossible.
It was unclear, howevef, whether
Mr. Rostow's statement comported
with two memorandums he wrote
President Johnson in November 1967.
In the first, dated Nov. 15, Mr. Ros-
tov said he had urged either the GI.A.
or the "intelligence community" at
large to "do a retrospective estimate,"
at least with regard to the "decline" in
guerrilla strength. "They say they can-
not do it," he told the President.
$ut on Nov. 21 Mr. Rostov advised
President Johnson that General West-
moreland's command was completing
a "retrospective estimate" of the order
of battle, "including previous under- ;
estimate of guerrilla fot~ces.,"
Inexplicably General We~moreland
had arrived in Washington with his
"retrospective analysis" a week before
that memo was written. By his awn
testimony, General Davidson had
briefed him on the figures while he was
still in Saigon.
Whether the conflict over the enemy
strength estimates is eventually re-
solved - at the trial any more than it
was during the war - it selves as an
example of the intricacies confronting
a jury that has already had a plethora
of statistical evidence laid before it.
Yet in this instance, as in some others
where .corroborative evidence is ab-
sent; the impres&ion made by a witness
may count for substantially more than
old data that is often ambiguous. ;,
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