VIETNAM ON TRIAL: Westmoreland vs. CBS

by Bob & Sydney Shaw Brewin ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 30, 1986

A journalistic husband-wife team (he's with The Village Voice, she with UPI) recount the behind-the-scenes story of General William Westmoreland's libel suit against CBS. They reconstruct the creation and development of the 60 Minutes documentary that sparked the suit and the intricate maneuvering that led to the trial. To do this, they pored through more than 400,000 pages of the pretrial depositions and testimony at the trial itself. They also interviewed the major characters involved; among them Westmoreland, Mike Wallace, producer George Crile as well as the lawyers for the plaintiff and defense. When ""The Uncounted Enemy""--which, in effect, charged Westmoreland with having participated in ""a conspiracy"" to underestimate the strength of the enemy's forces in Vietnam--was aired, there was considerable controversy at CBS about its accuracy and implications. Even Sam Adams--the ex-CIA analyst whose documents sparked the report--tried to get last-minute changes to blunt the impression that President Johnson himself had been deceived by the figures on enemy strength. As the trial approached, both sides used the Freedom of Information Act to garner hitherto secret information that shed new light on the conduct of the Vietnam War. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, for instance, had gone on record as early as 1967 that he believed the war was unwinnable. He was forced to break 20 years of silence in his pretrial deposition to reveal that his only purpose for continuing the war was to obtain a negotiated peace. Furthermore, the CIA was contending that to exclude South Vietnamese guerrillas and other civilians fighting with or otherwise abetting the North Vietnamese was to seriously underestimate the enemy's strength. The trial itself produced few fireworks. Westmoreland's young lawyer, provided by a conservative public-interest law firm, was outspent and frequently outmaneuvered by CBS's Cravath, Swaine and Moore. Westmoreland dropped the suit at the 11th hour in return for a CBS statement that the network ""respected"" his ""long and faithful service to his country and never intended to assert, and does not believe that (he) was unpatriotic or disloyal in performing his duties as he saw them."" This was a far cry from the $150 million Westmoreland had asked for. Brewin and Shaw do not examine the rights and wrongs of the case or its First Amendment implications. They do tell an often fascinating story that reveals much about television journalism. Despite a surfeit of minutiae, their book dovetails nicely with others on the subject such as Renata Adler's Two Trials and Don Kowet's A Matter of Honor.

Pub Date: Jan. 30, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1986

Categories: NONFICTION