Internet Project Proposal: Westmoreland vs. CBS

I propose to build a Website that is a teaching resource for advanced high school students and undergraduates on the Westmoreland vs. CBS trial and the order of battle dispute at the center of the case. General William C. Westmoreland – the former commander of U.S. troops in Vietnam -- sued CBS for $120-million dollars for libel over its 1982 documentary, “The Uncounted Enemy: a Vietnam Deception,” which accused the general and other top military officers of conspiring to misrepresent enemy troop strength in order to suggest the U.S. effort in Vietnam was progressing better than it was. The troop strength levels were part of the order of battle, a compilation of intelligence data about the size, strength, and capability of enemy forces. The CBS documentary examined an intelligence dispute between the Central Intelligence Agency and the military high command over the order of battle in the months before the 1968 Tet offensive. The CIA was pressing for a higher estimate of enemy troops to reflect village militias, while the military favored a lower estimate that did not count these militia members. In the end, the two sides agreed to paper over their dispute by counting the militias separately from the main Communist fighting forces.

General Westmoreland’s lawsuit and the resulting trial replayed the antagonisms between the military and the news media that had been apparent during the war, especially after the Tet offensive, which convinced many journalists that the war was being lost and that the military was deceiving the public. The lawsuit can be seen as part of the conservative backlash against the media in the years after the Vietnam War, in which some military figures, commentators, and politicians blamed the media for aiding the enemy through allegedly biased reporting about the war. My Website would therefore introduce students to some key controversies surrounding the Vietnam War, and also would be an opportunity to put some contemporary issues into an historical context.

I plan on presenting all sides in the controversy without taking a position on the merits of Westmoreland’s lawsuit, which was settled in the middle of the trial with statements by the general and CBS that basically amounted to an agreement to disagree and leave the issues to historians and the public to decide. The basic structure of my Website would be an initial page in which the navigation would be apparent to the main sections. The Website would be entitled Westmoreland vs. CBS: a Student Guide. The introductory page could include photographs of the main participants, such as Westmoreland on one side and the CBS correspondent Mike Wallace, who was featured in the documentary, on the other side, setting up the two sides of the controversy and the balanced nature of the site itself. On the left hand side of the page would be the main categories –

• The Vietnam War and the Tet Offensive
• “The Uncounted Enemy”
• Westmoreland vs. CBS
• The Evidence
• What Do You Think?

The first three sections would be mainly a summary of the facts about the war and the Westmoreland controversy, interspersed with photographs, a map of North and South Vietnam, and a chronology. The first section of my site would provide background on the war and the Tet offensive, while the second would deal with the CBS documentary and its main allegations, and the third section would be an account of the Westmoreland vs. CBS lawsuit and trial. These sections would resemble Doug Linder’s Famous Trials Website, such as his section on the My Lai courts-martial. Linder’s My Lai Website includes a brief commentary on the U.S. massacre of Vietnamese civilians at the village of My Lai and the courts-martial of Lieutenant William Calley and others involved in the killings. Linder also has helpful archival sections from the courts-martial transcripts, Vietnam-era documents, a chronology, photographs, public opinion polls, a map, and relevant legal material. In the first three sections of my Website, I would try to present an even-handed account of the Westmoreland controversy, with some of the features in Linder’s estimable site.

Like Linder, I would have archival, primary source information in my fourth section, “The Evidence,” which would include transcriptions from the CBS program, depositions, legal briefs, trial testimony, and documents that would be arranged with material supporting Westmoreland’s position and CBS’s position on opposing sides. This section would be the main student resource for the case. Some of the archival information would be presented in two columns, with, for example, testimony by Westmoreland juxtaposed to testimony by his detractors. There could also be excerpts of the CBS program with the main allegations next to Westmoreland’s defense. This would allow students to weigh the charges and Westmoreland’s explanations to determine which side they think is most persuasive. Some of the documents would be presented without any juxtaposed material so that students can interpret the historical record for themselves.

“What Do You Think?” would be an interactive section in which students would be asked to register their opinions about the case. Multiple choice questions would include such queries as “Do you think there was a conspiracy to undercount the enemy in the Vietnam War?” The responses would be “Yes,” “No,” or “Unproven.” The site would also ask “What evidence is most persuasive to you in the case?” The responses would include “The CBS Program,” “The Testimony of Westmoreland and his Supporters,” “The Testimony of the CBS Participants and their Supporters,” and “The Documents.” There would be instant polling data on the responses of the students to the questions, such as those used in the Center for History and New Media’s “How to Read a Map” site. I also could include similar features for documents in which students would be asked to identify certain aspects of the documents, such as who is it from, who is it to, the purpose of various sections, and its significance. I may also use for the documents, trial testimony, and CBS transcript the interactive features of the Center’s “Be the Historian: Personal Exercises,” in which students can read the documents and then use an interactive feature to see how historians analyze various aspects of the account. I would hope my site would resemble the even-handed, admirable presentation of Linder’s site, with the interactive features of the Center for History and New Media’s student exercises.

At the bottom of the introductory page of the Website would be a navigation bar with information about the Website, suggestions for further readings and links to related sites, and an e-mail link to allow students and teachers to contact the author of the site.

There are several websites on the Westmoreland vs. CBS trial. However, none of the existing sites have interactive features or take advantage of the digital format for a site solely devoted to the Westmoreland vs. CBS case. Most of the sites on the Web, including one by the author of this proposal, are essays posted on the Internet that could just as easily been presented as printed material. My proposed site would build on my essay published online by the Ehistory Bulletin, but would not highlight my judgments about the case. (I argued, “The CBS program was flawed in many ways, and the military probably did not engage in a conspiracy. The evidence presented at the Westmoreland vs. CBS trial, however, demonstrated that the military was very sensitive about media coverage of the war and, in part because of this, injudiciously underestimated the impact of irregular militia forces that caused many Americans casualties.”) My new site would combine the access provided by the Internet to any student interested in the Westmoreland case with interactive features and visually stimulating graphics to take advantage of the digital format.

The conclusions in my essay resemble to some degree those in an online book produced by The Center for the Study of Intelligence, which is an arm of the CIA. Not surprisingly, the chapter of the book on the order of battle dispute sides with the CIA in its bureaucratic battle with the military high command in Vietnam (known as MACV). The author of the book, Harold P. Ford, is a former CIA official who participated in the discussions of the order of battle dispute at the time of the controversy. His work does not deal with the CBS program and Westmoreland’s lawsuit, but is an analysis of the intelligence dispute. Ford argues, “CIA’s estimates of the enemy’s strength were considerably more accurate that those turned out elsewhere” but senior policy-makers “overrode CIA’s insistence that MACV’s estimates of the enemy’s order of battle were much too low.” Ford outlines several reasons for MACV’s faulty intelligence, but, like myself, he concludes that General Westmoreland’s concern about public perceptions of the war dictated the estimates in the order of battle (O/B). In Ford’s words, “the most important regulator of the MACV O/B estimates was the fact that General Westmoreland and his immediate staff were under a strong obligation to keep demonstrating ‘progress’ against Communist forces in Vietnam.” Ford, unlike CBS, does not use the word “conspiracy” to describe this situation. Perhaps it is a matter of semantics. Ford sharply criticizes MACV for “the least astute performance” in the order of battle dispute. He blasts MACV, saying “Its O/B positions misled planners and policymakers, distorted intelligence reporting and analysis, contributed directly to the psychological shock the Tet Offensive inflicted on the public and the White House, and thus caused serious damage to the national interest.” Ford’s conclusions may be seen as self-serving since he was a participant in the dispute, but I think the way the war unfolded and the historical record support many of his observations. However, unlike my proposed Website, he does not deal with the CBS program or the libel trial, and my site would not feature the conclusions of the author but would be a teaching resource.

Unlike Ford’s emphasis on intelligence matters, the Chicago-based Museum of Broadcast Communications – which bills itself as “one of only three broadcast museums in America” – has a small exhibit and article on “The Uncounted Enemy” and the Westmoreland lawsuit that focuses on the impact on the television news industry. The site criticizes the CBS program, not for its factual information, but its adverse impact on television documentaries: “The Uncounted Enemy failed to uplift TV news, and instead, contributed to the documentary’s decline.” The essay describes the program as engendering “one of the most bitter controversies in television history” with Westmoreland’s lawsuit. The site points out that the fallout from the lawsuit was that CBS lost its libel insurance, engendered a debate over syndication rules, and “produced [fewer documentaries] than ever before.” The museum’s essay relies on a TV Guide article and the network’s own internal investigation conducted by distinguished documentary producer Burton Benjamin to outline the journalistic sins of CBS in “The Uncounted Enemy.” The Museum concludes, “Benjamin’s effort remains widely respected within the journalistic community for revealing unfair aspects of the program’s production.” The Museum site is laid out simply with information about the program’s history, a picture from a courtroom artist at the Westmoreland trial, and recommendations for further reading. The site also includes links to other materials in the Museum’s website related to the story, including, somewhat contradictorily, a gushing biography of Mike Wallace, who we learn is “one of the most important news figures in the history of television” and “one of America’s most enduring and prominent television news personalities.” The Museum’s site understandable focuses on the television history of the program and its impact, and not the historiographical issues at the center of the trial. My project proposal would reverse this emphasis.

A very biased website devoted to the Westmoreland controversy is presented by Leonard Magruder, founder and president of the Vietnam Veterans for Academic Reform, which has a far right-wing agenda of “Leading the student revolt on campus against speech codes, political correctness, multiculturalism, gender feminism, dormitory re-education, lying about Vietnam, and other instruments of academic oppression.” (Of course, one could argue that right-wing propaganda that tears apart such concepts as multiculturalism is itself an instrument of “academic oppression.”) Magruder accepts Westmoreland’s point of view totally. He excoriates the American people for their “depth of ignorance on the Vietnam War, as a result of years of distortion by the media,” which, not surprisingly, according to Magruder is in the hands of the liberal elite. Magruder castigates “The Uncounted Enemy” for what he calls its “large number of serious discrepancies and outright lies,” which he said “was immediately covered up by the entire New York liberal media establishment.” The CIA whistleblower interviewed for the CBS program, Sam Adams, is described as “a Harvard graduate sympathetic to the leftist views of antiwar leaders.” (Magruder does not seem to be sure which is worse – being sympathetic to leftist views or being a Harvard graduate. Perhaps they’re the same thing in Magruder’s view.) Magruder pontificates that Adams “strongly believed in the Marxist concept of the ‘people’s revolution’” and therefore was advocating higher troop strength estimates that would count village militia defenders. Actually, Adams was analyzing the strategy of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese, which mobilized all sectors of the populace to battle the United States and its South Vietnamese allies. It is doubtful Adams “believed” in the “people’s revolution,” but was simply acknowledging the civil conflict dimension of the war. The CBS documentary, in Magruder’s view, “was a final desperate attempt by the media to nail down the ‘peace’ movement’s view of the war” and incorrectly portrayed the Tet offensive as a military defeat for the United States. Of course, in terms of the body count, Tet was a defeat for the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese, but in strategic terms, it was clearly a defeat by turning growing numbers of Americans against the war and leading President Lyndon Johnson to seek negotiations. One can argue whether the media or the optimistic statements of Westmoreland and other leaders was the main cause of this strategic defeat.

Magruder’s main contribution to the debate over the order of battle appears to be checking Johnson’s memoirs to determine that he was informed of the intelligence dispute over the enemy troop estimates. Several secondary sources are mentioned, but none of the trial testimony or documents are discussed. Magruder’s “analysis” is merely a collection of opinionated statements not bolstered by any evidence. He also puts a pro-Westmoreland spin on the inconclusive settlement of the lawsuit by saying the trial ended with a CBS “apology.” CBS never used any form of the word “apology” in its statement and merely said it did not mean to call into question the general’s integrity. The nature of the statements released by Westmoreland and CBS allowed both to claim victory, but in the end no money was paid to the general. Magruder’s Website is very simply laid out with no graphics, and is merely a forum for spouting his right-wing views in a digital format instead of print. Most of the recent material on the site is devoted to denouncing 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, the Vietnam War veteran who protested the conflict after his tour of duty. Magruder’s site is a tool for self-promotion, and is not useful to the historian other than to show some of the harsh feelings engendered by the Vietnam War and the media’s portrayal of the conflict.

A helpful bibliographical and archival academic Website is run by Clemson University Professor Ed Moise, who, in an e-mail explains that his site on the Westmoreland vs. CBS trial is part of a larger bibliography on the Vietnam War created “as a tool for helping my own students write term papers.” The bibliography started as a printout in the pre-Internet era just for his students, but Dr. Moise says during the 1990’s he decided to place it on the Internet to “make it available to a wider audience than just my students.” One of the helpful aspects of the site is the links to some of the actual documents, transcripts, and articles in the bibliography, making the Website partly an archive available to many students and researchers. Dr. Moise includes his own opinions about some of the sources, background about the case, and his own analysis that “the evidence that has emerged since the program was broadcast indicates that CBS’s judgment was good” that there was an attempt to undercount the enemy troops in Vietnam in order to mislead the public, news media, and Johnson Administration. Dr. Moise does not elaborate on whether this amounted to a conspiracy or simply a different interpretation of how to present enemy troops strength. Dr. Moise says his biggest hurdle “was the need to migrate from one address to another,” and he says he received “LOUSY advice” from Clemson, which meant he had to move again. Dr. Moise complains, “The way the URL has been repeatedly changed has seriously compromised my Google rating.” According to Dr. Moise, the result is that he has been getting “barely more than half the hits this year that I got last year.”

Dr. Moise’s site is certainly helpful for the undergraduate student looking for sources for a paper, but perhaps he should be more wary of including his own opinions about the sources, which could improperly direct the results of a student’s research. The site is laid out in a way that reflects the evolution of the site. It looks like an online version of a printed handout, aside from the ability to provide links to some of the sources. The site is not very sophisticated and has the looks of being haphazard. Dr. Moise explains that he adds sources to his list as they emerge. However, overall his Westmoreland vs. CBS website is a good starting point for a student researching the case.

A much more sophisticated and helpful archive is available at Texas Tech University’s Virtual Vietnam Archive. The archive is full of documents, photographs, and other materials online. The site is designed to enable “scholars, students, and all interested in this remarkable period in our world history to conduct research directly from universities, schools, libraries, and homes. Of equal importance, it will enable Vietnam veterans – those who actually served – to access records that might be of importance to them in their continuing efforts to understand their own experiences.” The archives are readily searchable, and the only problem is the need to precisely define your search terms to avoid an excessive number of hits. For example, a search on “Westmoreland” and “CBS” brings up 2095 items, some of which are not available online. A search for “Westmoreland,” “CBS”, and “Trial” brings up 592 documents, including many that are absolutely essential for any examination of the case, including all of the depositions, briefs, and trial transcript. (Dr. Moise seems to have liberally used the online materials at Texas Tech for his own site.) Overall, the Virtual Vietnam Archive is the best online resource for researchers in the order of battle dispute, and may well be an essential stop for anyone examining the case. The ability to access the trial transcript and other materials in an easily navigable, accessible, and searchable way is a priceless asset for researchers. Many other items are only available at the traditional archives in Lubbock, Texas, but the online search capability allows the researcher to prepare for a visit to the archives. In coming years, Texas Tech eventually plans to “include a record for every item in the Vietnam Archive. All non-copyrighted items will be available online, free of charge.” The virtual archive currently holds more than 1.5 million pages of materials online, “including documents, photographs, slides, negatives, audio and moving image recordings, artifacts, and oral histories.” With new items being added every day, the Virtual Vietnam Archive will only get more valuable as time goes by. My site would be different in being a teaching resource specifically about the Westmoreland vs. CBS trial and not an archive for researchers – although I would include some primary source material in “The Evidence” section.

As this survey of Websites related to the Westmoreland case shows, there is no site devoted to both the CBS program and libel trial and the intelligence dispute that has interactive features and is a teaching resource. I propose to devote at least four weeks to learning the software needed to build the site. I foresee building a flat HTML page using Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and the CHNM Poll Builder software. I would probably need about two weeks to gather materials for the site, helped immensely by all the materials available at the Virtual Vietnam Archives. Perhaps the National Archives would have useful material. The Library of Congress does not seem to have much Vietnam-related materials as part of its American Memory collection. I propose to devote four more weeks building the actual site, for a total time of 10 weeks, with a financial cost of less than $10,000, which could be covered in a grant from an educational foundation. The main problem is my own lack of technical skills building Websites, so the four weeks learning period may need to be extended. Certainly I foresee taking another class in Website creation.