''The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception'' was a controversial television documentary aired as part of the ''

CBS Reports ''CBS Reports'' is the umbrella title used for documentaries by CBS News which aired starting in 1959 through the 1990s. The series sometimes aired as a wheel series rotating with '' 60 Minutes'' (or other similar CBS News series), as a series of i ...

'' series on January 23, 1982. The 90-minute program, produced by

George Crile III George Washington Crile III (March 5, 1945 – May 15, 2006) was an American journalist most closely associated with his three decades of work at CBS News. He specialized in dangerous and controversial subjects, resulting in both praise and c ...

and narrated by

Mike Wallace Myron Leon Wallace (May 9, 1918 – April 7, 2012) was an American journalist, game show host, actor, and media personality. He interviewed a wide range of prominent newsmakers during his seven-decade career. He was one of the original correspo ...

, asserted that in 1967

intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can b ...

officers under General

William Westmoreland William Childs Westmoreland (March 26, 1914 – July 18, 2005) was a United States Army general, most notably commander of United States forces during the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1968. He served as Chief of Staff of the United States Army from ...

, the commander of

Military Assistance Command, Vietnam U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) was a joint-service command of the United States Department of Defense. MACV was created on 8 February 1962, in response to the increase in United States military assistance to South Vietnam. MACV ...

(MAC-V), had manipulated intelligence estimates in order to show far fewer

communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

personnel in

South Vietnam South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam ( vi, Việt Nam Cộng hòa), was a state in Southeast Asia that existed from 1955 to 1975, the period when the southern portion of Vietnam was a member of the Western Bloc during part of th ...

than there actually were, thereby creating the impression that the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...

was being won. In response, Westmoreland publicly rebuked these claims and demanded 45 minutes of open airtime to rebut them. CBS refused the request, so Westmoreland

sued - A lawsuit is a proceeding by a party or parties against another in the civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. The term "lawsuit" is used in reference to a civil actio ...

Crile, Wallace, and CBS for

libel Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...

on September 13. A conservative public-interest law firm, Capital Legal Foundation, brought the suit on Westmoreland's behalf, and its president, Dan Burt, served as Westmoreland's ''

pro bono ( en, 'for the public good'), usually shortened to , is a Latin phrase for professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment. In the United States, the term typically refers to provision of legal services by legal professionals for pe ...

'' attorney. The suit was funded by grants from several conservative organizations, such as the Richard Mellon Scaife Foundation, the

John M. Olin Foundation The John M. Olin Foundation was a conservative American grant-making foundation established in 1953 by John M. Olin, president of the Olin Industries chemical and munitions manufacturing businesses. Unlike most other foundations, it was charge ...

, and the

Smith Richardson Foundation The Smith Richardson Foundation is a private foundation based in Westport, Connecticut that supports policy research in the realms of foreign and domestic public policy. According to the foundation's website, its mission is "to contribute to im ...

whose goals were to kill ''CBS Reports'' and turn back the 1964 ''

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'' rule, which required that

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s or

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prove

actual malice Actual malice in United States law is a legal requirement imposed upon public officials or public figures when they file suit for libel (defamatory printed communications). Compared to other individuals who are less well known to the general publi ...

to win a libel suit against the press. The case went to trial two years later. The trial, ''

Westmoreland v. CBS ''Westmoreland v. CBS'' was a $120 million libel suit brought in 1982 by former U.S. Army Chief of Staff General William Westmoreland against CBS, Inc. for broadcasting on its program ''CBS Reports'' a documentary entitled ''The Uncounted Enemy ...

'', was approaching its end in 1985 when Westmoreland suddenly dropped his lawsuit, citing a statement by CBS that Westmoreland interpreted as an apology. CBS did not retract anything that had been said in the

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, but stated that it had “never intended to assert, and does not believe, that General Westmoreland was unpatriotic or disloyal in performing his duties as he saw them.” CBS subsequently lost its libel

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over the case. Additionally, serious, in-depth documentaries became produced far less frequently on CBS and the other two major networks of the time than had been the case during the 1960s and 1970s, a development that perhaps coincides with less aggressive investigative reporting on television on all news programs generally since the time of the suit.

Notes

References

* Sally Bedell & Dan Kower. “Anatomy of a Smear: How CBS News Broke the Rules and ‘Got’ Gen. Westmoreland”, ''TV Guide'', 24 May 1982. * Burton Benjamin. ''The CBS Benjamin Report''. Washington, D.C.: The Media Institute, 1984. *

Connie Bruck Connie Bruck is an American journalist and a reporter on subjects covering business and politics. She has been a staff writer at ''The New Yorker'' since 1989. Before joining ''The New Yorker'', she was a staff writer at ''The American Lawyer'' for ...

. “The soldier takes the stand”, ''The American Lawyer'' (January/February 1985): 113–119. * Grace Ferrari Levine. “Television Journalism on Trial: Westmoreland v. CBS”, ''Journal of Mass Media Ethics'' 5, no. 2 (June 1990): 102–116. * Walter Schneir & Miriam Schneir. “The Right's Attack on the Press”, ''The Nation'', 30 March 1985. CBS Reports 1982 in American television American documentary television films Documentary films about the Vietnam War 1982 documentary films 1982 films Pentagon Papers 1980s American films {{documentary-tv-film-stub

See also

Notes

References