Westmoreland V. CBS - Circumstances

Circumstances

U.S. Army General William C. Westmoreland served four years in Vietnam, from 1964 to 1968, as COMUSMACV—Commander U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam. He was in command during the Tet Offensive, a surprise, country-wide attack on the U.S. forces by the combined forces of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam and the Vietnam People's Army in 1968. The attack is widely viewed as having contributed to a growing perception in the United States that the U.S. had underestimated enemy strength and resolve, and that, in contrast to assurances from Westmoreland and the Johnson administration, there was no "light at the end of the tunnel." Walter Cronkite visited Vietnam in February 1968, in the immediate aftermath of Tet, and returned home and gave his famous "mired in a stalemate" on-air editorial. "To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion." Several weeks later, President Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection.

The documentary contended that Westmoreland had contributed to the public reaction to Tet by manipulating intelligence about enemy strength in order to create the impression of progress. Westmoreland contended that politics had not influenced the intelligence reports of his command. Intelligence officers working under Westmoreland and contemporaneous classified documents supported the documentary's contention that Army intelligence in Westmoreland's command had been manipulated for political purposes. Other offices denied any such manipulation.

Shortly after trial in the Westmoreland case began, another famous libel trial got underway in the same federal court house: Then former Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon's suit against TIME magazine. Sharon challenged one passage in a lengthy article detailing the findings of the official Israeli investigation into Sharon's responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila Massacre of Palestinians by Phalangist forces during the Israeli invastion of Lebanon in 1982. On January 25, 1985, the jury in the Sharon case found for the defendant while the Westmoreland v. CBS trial was still in progress. The Sharon jury stated that TIME acted "negligently and carelessly" but did not find evidence of actual malice.