Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam

by Lewis Sorley

  WITH WESTMORELAND ONCE more in need of something to do, John West, the outgoing South Carolina Governor who had earlier given Westmoreland the economic development position, now wrote to President Nixon: "I would like to suggest that you give consideration to the utilization of the talents of our mutual friend, General William C. Westmoreland. As you know, 'Westy' had an unfortunate political experience, not of his own making." Nothing came of that letter, and not surprisingly, since by then Nixon was consumed by some extremely serious problems of his own. In fact, the letter itself seems somewhat bizarre, dated 13 August 1974, four days after Nixon resigned the presidency.

  Even before that Westmoreland's prospects with Nixon had not been good, as Ernest Furgurson wrote in March 1974: Westmoreland "could never convince me that [being elected governor] would be the pinnacle of his ambitions. There was a time... when the thought of becoming President passed through his mind." Given that, concluded Furgurson, when Westmoreland retired as Chief of Staff Nixon was not going to risk giving him a major appointment. "He offered him the Immigration Service. Westmoreland refused." He would have accepted the Veterans Administration, "but that was not offered."5

  Congressman Dorn, Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs and also an unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate, now also tried to be helpful in Westmoreland's job search, telegraphing the President (still Nixon, but barely): "Should the position of Administrator of the Veterans Administration become vacant, I recommend for your earnest consideration General William C. Westmoreland." Westmoreland wrote in longhand on a letter from Dorn the reply he wanted typed up: "You and I have shared a most unusual governatorial campaign and I must say the results are perplexing."6

  "Mrs. Westmoreland is one happy woman that he lost," said Charles MacDonald. "What he would like is some government appointment in which he could work part-time. He doesn't do anything now," this said in May 1976. "He has no real job."

  The aftertaste of the campaign was bitter for Westmoreland. "It was one of the more tiring and frustrating experiences of my life, and I have had many in that category," he wrote six weeks after the defeat. As so often in the past, though, Westmoreland tailored his message, or outright reversed it, for different recipients. "I found the campaign enjoyable, interesting and educational," he wrote to someone else at almost that same time. "I hold no animosities." On that latter point he told another person that "the world is filled with some peculiar people with extreme and radical views and, as you pointed out, the South Carolina Republican Party is no exception."

  Asked a few years later about his political future, Westmoreland responded that "I would never get elected for office. I'm too controversial, too forthright, and I can't act. It would be totally repugnant to me."

  29. Plaintiff

  ON 23 JANUARY 1982 the CBS Television Network aired a documentary entitled "The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception." Said Mike Wallace in the introduction: "Tonight we're going to present evidence of what we have come to believe was a conscious effort—indeed, a conspiracy at the highest levels of American military intelligence—to suppress and alter critical intelligence on the enemy in the year leading up to the Tet Offensive."

  Westmoreland cooperated in preparation of the program, traveling to New York for interviews with Wallace. George Crile, the program's producer, told Wallace before the session that he had read Westmoreland a letter describing the proposed areas to be discussed and that Westmoreland had made no complaints. "He puzzles me—," said Crile, "seems not to be all that bright."1 He also told Wallace about "Westy's rather vigorous request for an honorarium." Westmoreland had told him, he said, "that he makes his living giving speeches and thinks it only fair of us to pay him something. Suggests $3,000."2

  In a note to Wallace before the interview, Crile was optimistic about how the program was coming along. "Now all you have to do is break General Westmoreland and we have the whole thing aced," he said.3

  On the program Westmoreland did not come across well. He looked and acted nervous, even evasive, stammering and licking his lips and clearly uncomfortable. Observed William F. Buckley Jr., "I am prepared to concede that Gen. Westmoreland must have strengths. But he has none at all in front of a camera."4 Peter Braestrup also commented tellingly on Westmoreland's paltry skills: "His memory for details, even when the facts favor him, is now rusty. He occasionally shoots from the hip. He is easily exasperated by questions he considers unfair or malicious."5 The result was that Westmoreland often looked guilty, whether or not he was in fact.

  At one point Wallace and the general discussed losses inflicted on the enemy during the 1968 Tet Offensive. Wallace noted that MACV's first order of battle report after the offensive credited the enemy with 204,126 men. That was down from some 224,000 claimed just before Tet, and so reflected a reduction of 20,000. "How many troops did he [the enemy] lose, General?" asked Wallace. Westmoreland responded that, out of about 84,000 troops committed, in "the early days of the Tet offensive, he lost 35,000." Wallace confirmed that Westmoreland meant 35,000 killed, then asked how many wounded. "Well, I—we have no way of knowing that, but usu—usually the ratio is about three-to-one, three wounded for one that is killed."6

  Wallace, having set his prey up for the kill, then pounced. "If you take General Westmoreland at his word," he observed, "here is the logical problem you run into. It begins with MACV's official estimate of total combined enemy strength in the South just before Tet—224,000. Five weeks later, on March seventh, Westmoreland reported 50,000 of those enemy had been killed. Now, according to his own standard ratio, for every one killed three were wounded. So, even disregarding the enemy soldiers who defected or were captured, the bottom line figure just doesn't make sense. If so many Viet Cong had been taken out of action, the question had to be asked: Whom were we fighting?"7

  Wallace recalled a crucial part of that interview when he asked about Westmoreland's decision to drop the Self-Defense Forces from the order of battle. By that point in the interview, said Wallace, Westmoreland was "acutely irritated with the whole tenor of our discussion, so instead of answering my question, the general decided that the time had come to put me in my place with a verbal reprimand." Thus, Westmoreland: "This is a non-issue, Mike. I made the decision. It was my responsibility. I don't regret making it. I stand by it. And the facts prove that I was right. Now, let's stop it!"8

  Wallace responded by rephrasing his question: "Isn't it a possibility that the real reason for suddenly deciding in the late summer of 1967 to remove an entire category of the enemy from the order of battle—a category that had been in the order of battle since 1961—was based on political considerations?"9

  Westmoreland: "No, decidedly not. That—that—." Wallace pressed: "Didn't you make this clear in your August twentieth cable?" Westmoreland: "No, no. Yeah. No."10

  Wallace: "I have a copy of your August twentieth cable—." Westmoreland: "Well, sure. Okay, okay."11

  Wallace then quoted from what he said was Westmoreland's cable, but it was not. It was instead a cable General Creighton Abrams, then Westmoreland's deputy in Vietnam, had sent in Westmoreland's absence, stating the "command position." It really did not matter, except that Wallace had misstated the sender, since the message was the same: "We have been projecting an image of success over the recent months. The self-defense militia must be removed or the newsmen will immediately seize on the point that the enemy force has increased.... No explanation could then prevent the press from drawing an erroneous and gloomy conclusion."12

  During a break in the taping Westmoreland exclaimed angrily that he had been "rattlesnaked" by Wallace, meaning apparently that he had been quizzed on matters for which he was unprepared. He claimed that he had not had access to his files and records in preparation for the interview.13

  In fact, however, in subsidiary materials held with the Westmoreland biographical file at the U.S. Army Center of Military History, there is a typescript account, "General Westmoreland's Use of His Personal Records in Connection
with His Litigation with CBS," dated 13 October 1982. Noting that Westmoreland had upon his retirement temporarily given the Center "a large collection of official and personal files," the document notes that he used these materials extensively in the preparation of his memoir and, "most recently, to refresh his memory during the filming of the recent CBS special on the order of battle controversy during the Vietnam war and to answer or correct erroneous statements made by the network."

  Also, states this document: "[F]rom time to time since General Westmoreland first learned of CBS's intention to produce a program dealing with the order of battle question and intelligence collection during the Vietnam war, he has asked to examine portions of his official and personal papers to refresh his memory in preparation of interviews with members of the CBS staff or to correct mistaken information following these interviews and the airing of the program itself."14 Vince Demma, the staffer who pulled the documents requested by Westmoreland, remembered that "he was honing in on the August 1967 order of battle conference. That was what interested him."15

  Wallace's "lengthy, harsh interview with Westmoreland"16 took place at the Plaza Hotel in New York on 15 May 1981. On apparently even simple matters Westmoreland came across as defensive, unfocused, and inarticulate. A question about his 1967 trips from Vietnam to address the Congress and other audiences produced this response: "I was ordered to come to Washington." "And—and I—I wasn't happy about it, but I was ordered back. And I said if this is the President—what—is—if this is what the President wants me to do, well, I'll—I'll do my best."17

  Apparently it was something of an ordeal for both parties, Wallace later stating, "[T]hat was hard work." What is puzzling is why—given his obvious unhappiness with how the interview was progressing—Westmoreland did not just walk away from it rather than endure a three-hour interrogation that portrayed him in such a negative way.

  The ninety-minute program aired on 23 January 1982, at nine-thirty on a Saturday evening, drawing what was reportedly the smallest audience of the week for a prime-time broadcast, ranked seventy-ninth out of seventy-nine. Nevertheless several million people viewed the documentary in whole or in part.

  Westmoreland was devastated by the program's allegations that reporting on the enemy order of battle had been intentionally falsified. Within days he assembled a group of supporters (prominent people, but not all of them in a position to know the truth or falsity of the program's substance) to join him in a press conference held at the Army and Navy Club in Washington. Joining Westmoreland were Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, Lieutenant General Daniel Graham, George Carver of CIA, Lieutenant General Phillip B. Davidson Jr., and Colonel Charles Morris. Barry Zorthian was there in the audience. Westmoreland had sought to have Major General Joseph McChristian attend, but McChristian declined, instead sending Westmoreland a telegram in which he said: "I have defended the integrity of Army intelligence when I was in Vietnam. I cannot speak to that after I left. Those who served later should defend it if they can, and if they cannot you should find out why."18

  Westmoreland led off, accusing CBS of "a vicious, scurrilous, and premeditated attack" on his character and charging that the interview with Mike Wallace was "a star chamber procedure, with distorted, false, and specious information, plain lies, derived by sinister deception—an attempt to execute me on the guillotine of public opinion."19 Westmoreland also maintained that "he had 'done no research and had brought no documents' to refresh his fourteen-year-old memory of events."20

  He also sought to obscure what he had done to the order of battle, stating that "to include the disputed categories in the Order of Battle would have been 'to introduce a substantial jump in enemy strength when in fact there was no increase in combat strength.'" But of course the issue was not introducing such categories, which had been included all along, but Westmoreland's taking them out, thereby reducing the total. "I refused to include those,"21 said Westmoreland, when what he had done instead was to take them out.

  There was also, as it turned out, a little manipulation of evidence at the press conference. Westmoreland introduced Graham to offer a detailed rebuttal of the CBS broadcast. Graham used a videotape machine to show Colonel Gains Hawkins appearing to acknowledge that the statistics in question referred only to the political order of battle, not to armed Viet Cong. But, reported Robert Kaiser for the Washington Post, "[T]he clip from the documentary that Graham showed was edited to cut out Hawkins' final words, when he said that the political order of battle included 'the Vietcong's political bureaucracy and the guerrilla strength.' The guerrillas were armed." Asked about this use of editing to distort Hawkins's remarks, said Kaiser, "Westmoreland made no reply."22

  Naturally the broadcast and its immediate aftermath occasioned a cascade of media commentary, much of it notably well informed in commenting on the complicated and somewhat arcane details of the matter. This was particularly the case with the enemy categories known as Self-Defense Forces and Secret Self-Defense Forces. "They had been included as part of the enemy force in the order of battle since MACV was formed in February 1962," observed one press account, "but MACV was now claiming they were merely old men, women and children who planted punji stakes."23

  That characterization tripped Westmoreland up during a discussion of body count in the course of his later deposition during a libel suit he brought against CBS and others. After he had directed removal of several categories of enemy (Self-Defense Forces and so on) from the order of battle, Westmoreland was asked whether he nevertheless continued to include them in body count when they were killed. His first stab at an answer was that, after an action, "an estimate based on an inspection of the battlefield was put in," and an effort was made "to relate those casualties to a very specific category or a specific unit. But," he said, "that was very difficult to do."24

  That assertion proved puzzling to the CBS attorney questioning Westmoreland: "One of the problems that I have, General, is that on the one hand you stated that the self-defense militia were almost all women, youngsters and old men, and on the other hand you say that it is hard to distinguish them from the rest of the enemy order of battle. I can't understand why those two things would both be the case."25 Westmoreland could only backtrack: "Well, I, uh—I think that I overstated the first point. I really hadn't concentrated on the practicality of it, and I think I overstated that."26

  STRONG CRITICISM OF the CBS documentary soon came from an unlikely source, TV Guide magazine. Don Kowet and Sally Bedell's article, "Anatomy of a Smear: How CBS Broke the Rules and 'Got' Gen. Westmoreland," obviously drawing on at least one inside source at CBS, alleged numerous very serious violations of network policy and journalistic ethics by Crile and his production team. These included failing to interview important witnesses who might have supported Westmoreland, such as Lieutenant General Phil Davidson and the CIA's George Carver. Some of those who were interviewed and gave evidence favorable to Westmoreland were excluded from the broadcast, in particular Walt Rostow. Others who appeared on the program were misidentified, including a DIA officer said to have been the chief of the MACV delegation to the SNIE conference.

  While the TV Guide writers were sympathetic to Westmoreland and how he had been treated by CBS, they were also somewhat dismayed by the man they encountered when they interviewed him in Charleston in February 1982. "Westmoreland seemed a mere shell of the jut-jawed general whose confident face was featured on newscasts throughout the late 1960s," they reported. "His eyes teared easily. He slurred some words. He seemed to suffer spasms of forgetfulness."27

  Kowet later wrote a book about the case in which he revealed a particularly unflattering opinion of Westmoreland, despite having so harshly criticized the way CBS produced its documentary. "Westmoreland," he wrote, "was a pariah whom most Americans viewed as unsympathetic, the stigma of Vietnam clinging to him like swamp stench."28

  A more compassionate view was expressed by a former congressman, Otis Pike, writing in Newsday: "CBS made Gen. Westmoreland appear evil, a
nd he was not evil. He may not have been either the best or the brightest, but he was doing the best he could for his country and he deserved better than CBS gave him."29 Many others agreed with that assessment, including a group of veterans who organized a campaign to help pay Westmoreland's legal expenses.

  STUNG BY THE CRITICISM, CBS began an internal investigation into the program's fairness and accuracy. Burton Benjamin, a respected senior executive at the network, directed the inquiry. At one point, interrogating Crile, he asked, "Do you think Westmoreland was somewhat inept?" Crile agreed: "Yes. He seems stupid."30

  Among the serious shortcomings Benjamin discovered in analyzing Crile's work were repeated violations of CBS News standards—matching a question to an answer given to a different question, associating an answer with a referent other than the one intended, conflating portions of answers to produce a position not stated by the interviewee, coaching interviewees friendly to the program's thesis, reinterviewing such witnesses to get a stronger position, failing to interview important persons who would probably have supported Westmoreland's position, unwarranted use of the word "conspiracy," and a serious imbalance in reflecting opposing sides of the issues. Benjamin's summary judgment was that the documentary was "seriously flawed."31