Word: westmorelands
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...closing ceremony was attended by General William C. Westmoreland, the former Viet Nam theater commander, and President Reagan. Wearing a raincoat and speaking in a subdued tone, Reagan, who had angered vets by not attending the wall's dedication two years ago, called those who had served in Viet Nam true patriots. "I believe that in the decade since Viet Nam the healing has begun," said the President, "and I hope that before my days as Commander in Chief are over the process of healing will be complete...
...courtroom six floors below the one in which Ariel Sharon testified, another general last week took the stand in a $120 million libel suit against CBS. Dressed in a crisp, gray suit and sporting a small red-and-white striped Viet Nam service ribbon, the ramrod-straight William Westmoreland, 70, former commander of U.S. forces in Viet Nam, recounted his 36 years of military service. Then he launched into a rebuttal of The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception, the 1982 CBS documentary that is at issue in the trial...
According to the broadcast, Westmoreland had engaged in "a conspiracy at the highest levels" of the military to "suppress and alter" intelligence data regarding enemy troop strength in the months before the January 1968 Tet offensive. Westmoreland, said CBS, omitted from the order of battle, the official estimate of enemy forces, some 100,000 self-defense, secret self-defense and political cadre. Westmoreland's suit challenges the CBS charge that hi doing so he deceived President Lyndon Johnson and the Joint Chiefs of Staff about the Westmoreland growing military threat facing U.S. servicemen...
...Westmoreland contends that what CBS portrayed as a conspiracy was in reality a legitimate and widely understood debate about how to evaluate the impact of part-time, often untrained, guerrilla opponents. He charges that CBS News Producer George Crile and Correspondent Mike Wallace willfully ignored evidence that supported him. To bolster his attack, Westmoreland's attorney Dan Burt summoned as witnesses both Rostow, who had given a three-hour interview to CBS that was left on the cutting-room floor, and former Special Ambassador Robert Komer, who was not even questioned by the CBS producers...
...known to Viet Nam-era journalists as Blow Torch for his high-powered manner, was asked by CBS Attorney David Boies whether these forces were armed. Komer laughed. "We never could find these people," he said, "much less determine whether they were armed." Responding to CBS charges that Westmoreland and others had felt pressure to produce upbeat troop-level estimates, Komer added, "At no time did anyone ever give me an order with regard to ceilings or preconceived limits...