Word: westmorelands
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...documentary The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception appeared to accuse retired Army General William Westmoreland of being one of the principal figures behind a "conspiracy at the highest levels of American military intelligence." The alleged aim was to underreport enemy troop strength and create the illusion that the U.S. was winning the Viet Nam War. After the January broadcast, the angered general turned down the network's offer of 15 minutes' rebuttal time and last September slapped CBS with a $120 million libel suit. That suit is generating its own prickly set of constitutional complications...
...first one has now been resolved in Westmoreland's favor. It involved the question of whether an internal CBS study of the show, inspired by a TV Guide article last May calling the program "a smear," was protected by a business or journalistic privilege of confidentiality. The study was conducted by CBS News Senior Executive Producer Burton Benjamin and was summarized by CBS News President Van Gordon Sauter in a memorandum made public in July. Drawing on Benjamin's study, Sauter conceded that the program had deviated from certain CBS News practices, but stood by its substance...
When CBS duly surrendered the study last week, Westmoreland's lawyers termed the document "devastating," while CBS shrugged it off as consistent with the original Sauter memo. "They were hoping to find a smoking gun," said Sauter. "There isn't even the smell of cordite...
...however, TV Guide's editors have been trying to introduce a brand of muckraking to their pages. Last May the magazine exposed what CBS News later acknowledged were journalistic violations in a network documentary, aired in January 1982, that assailed the Viet Nam War conduct of General William Westmoreland. Last week, however, TV Guide found itself fending off charges of inaccuracy and unfairness, made by CBS, among others, against an article in its Jan. 22 issue...
Saturday's three-hour parade down Constitution Avenue, led by Westmoreland, was the vets' own show. The 15,000 in uniforms and civvies, walked among floats, bands and baton twirlers. The flag-waving crowds even cheered...