Between You and Me (24 page)

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niques. The phrases used most frequently in the objections were

“ambush journalism” and “entrapment.” To no one’s surprise, Hewitt and I did not agree with those assessments, especially when it came to the charge of entrapment. We noted, for example, that although the two men who had presented themselves as comanagers of our mock clinic in Chicago were, in reality, staff members of the Better Government Association, at no time and in no way did they suggest the clinic was seeking kickbacks of any kind. In every case, it was the visitors from the laboratories who initiated those offers, and all we did was document their proposals.

It was altogether fitting that I was the correspondent on the hot seat when we faced our critics that night. There’s no denying that, for better or for worse, I was the on-air reporter who was most closely associated with our adventures in investigative journalism. One reason for that was because the producers I worked with were especially eager to explore that challenging terrain, and let me take a moment here to doff my cap to two of them in particular: Barry Lando and Marion Goldin. Lando produced the Chicago stories on our bogus clinic and Mirage Tavern, as well as some others of that nature before he moved on to Paris, where he became my main producer on the assignments that took me to the Middle East and other overseas locations. The many stories I did with Goldin included the California pieces on Murrieta and Ernest Sinclair’s diploma mill.

Even though I did not agree with the charges leveled against us on that special edition of 60 Minutes (a broadcast that, by the way, was Goldin’s idea), I didn’t think we were entirely blameless. In my opinion, our major fault was an excess of zeal. There were times when we got so caught up in the investigative fever that we adopted a sort of crusade mentality and wound up doing reports that projected more heat than light. One day in 1980 another member of my producing team, Norman Gorin (who also did some first-rate work in the

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investigative sphere), received a call from a friend who said he had a story proposal. Gorin had a keen sense of humor, and his first response was: “Yes, but is it a national disgrace? It has to be a national disgrace. That’s the only kind of story I’m allowed to work on these days.”

As we moved into the 1980s, we trimmed our sails a bit, in terms of both the tactics we used and the number of pieces we did. When I say “we,” I’m referring to all the correspondents who worked on 60

Minutes. Just because I was more heavily involved in investigative reporting than my on-air colleagues were doesn’t mean that they steered clear of the genre. All of them had delved into scams of one kind or another, and eventhough we cut back onthe volume, all of us continued through the years that followed to take on periodic assignments that enabled us to add fresh portraits to our respective rogues’ galleries.

Twenty-one of those portraits were selected for publication in a 2003 book called Con Men. Compiled by a freelance editor named Ian Jackman, Con Men is (in the clarion boast of the subtitle) an om-nibus of “fascinating profiles of swindlers and rogues from the files of the most successful broadcast in television history.” The opening chapter is an account of my 1978 story on R. J. Rudd and his contemptible clinic at Murrieta Hot Springs, followed by other pieces we did over the next two decades, various stories by each of the show’s correspondents.

I was asked to write anintroductionto the book, and I beganit by recalling a comment that Morley Safer made back in 1981 or there-abouts. “A crook,” he said, “doesn’t feel he’s really made it as a crook until we’ve told his story on 60 Minutes.” Over the years we’ve done our best to give more thana few crooks the recognitionthey deserved.

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W H I S T L E - B L O W E R

G e n e r a l W i l l i a m C . W e s t m o r e l a n d OF ALL THE CONTROVERSIES I’VE been caught up in over the years, none was as traumatic as the firestorm that erupted in 1982 after we broadcast a CBS Reports documentary called “The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception.” That furor was one for the ages, and before it finally ran its course over three years later, my CBS colleagues and I had to go through the ordeal of a $120 million libel suit. In addition, I was stricken with a severe case of clinical depression. The irony is that until we did that documentary, I had a fairly cordial relationship with the principal figure in our story, General William C. Westmoreland. I certainly did not agree with all his military assessments and optimistic predictions when he was in comB E T W E E N Y O U A N D M E

mand of our forces in Vietnam, but I had no reason to question his honor or integrity. And Westmoreland had indicated that he had some respect for my work as a reporter.

I first met the general in March 1967, when I began a two-month assignment in Vietnam. This was over a year before the birth of 60

Minutes, and I had been working as a field correspondent since the summer of ’66, when I relinquished my anchor post on the CBS

Morning News. Most of my reporting during this period dealt with domestic politics and civil rights, which was just fine, except I wanted to take a break from that drill and spend some time overseas.

By the mid-1960s, no foreign story was bigger than the war in Vietnam, so I asked my bosses to send me to Saigon.

I was told in advance that Westmoreland welcomed the arrival of older reporters in Vietnam, in large part because he believed that those of us who had served in World War II (I was a junior naval officer in the Pacific theater) were more likely to be in tune with the values and judgments of senior officers like him. I don’t know how much that mattered, but I will say that, like millions of other Americans, I was an early supporter of our military mission in Vietnam. As time went on, I began to question the decisions that gradually transformed the conflict into a full-scale American war, and by 1967, I shared in the growing concern over the fact that even after all those escalations, we’d been unable to achieve the victory we’d been led to expect.

Concern was not the mood I encountered at the headquarters of the U.S. combat missioninSaigon, where I was ushered into the commanding presence of General Westmoreland. With his ramrod posture and firmly set jaw, “Westy” struck me as the very model of military assurance, and that initial reaction was reinforced when I was given the opportunity to spend some time with him. Not long

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after I arrived in Saigon, I was invited to accompany the general on a daylong air tour of firebases and field briefings across the length and breadth of South Vietnam. At one of our stops, we walked through the military hospital at Cam Ranh Bay, where wounded soldiers gazed up at their commander with admiration. It was an impressive performance, in keeping with the calm and steady optimism he exuded.

Westmoreland and his top aides kept insisting over and over that although the U.S. mission had gone through some rough patches, we had finally gained the upper hand in the war. (In hindsight, my main regret is that he refrained from uttering in my presence the phrase that would later cause him so much grief, his confident boast that there was “light at the end of the tunnel.”) From my own observations and conversations I had with reporters who had spent the past several years in Vietnam—especially R. W. Apple of The New York Times and William Touhy of the Los Angeles Times—I came to the sad conclusion that our troops were bogged downina quagmire. By the time I returned to the States that spring, I was more convinced than ever that our intervention in Vietnam had been a terrible mistake, a tragic waste of lives and resources.

Inspite of my disillusion, my reporting onVietnam was evenhanded (as, of course, it should have been), so Westmoreland had no reasonto believe that I had turned against the war. If he had been privy to my personal feelings, he probably would not have written the letter he sent me in 1972 after 60 Minutes aired anupdate of a story I had done a few years earlier on three wounded veterans who had beenshipped home from Vietnam without their legs. “Dear Mike,”

the general wrote in response to that broadcast, “I just want to tell you that it was a first-class piece of reporting. I have never seen better.” I wrote back to thank him, and that was the last contact I had with

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Westmoreland until May 1981, when I interviewed him for the documentary that brought our cordial relationship to a shattering end.

The catalyst who brought the two of us together for what proved to be a momentous encounter was the producer of the documentary, George Crile. A former editor at Harper’s magazine, Crile had been hired in 1976 to produce broadcasts for the documentary unit we called CBS Reports. Over the next five years, he put together a number of excellent, award-winning documentaries. I was well aware of his sterling reputation when he came to me one day in early 1981 and proposed that we work together on a new project he was developing for CBS Reports.

Crile said he was pursuing a story about an elaborate deception that had been carried out by senior officers in Vietnam over a period of several months in 1967. According to the primary source, a former CIA analyst in Vietnam, General Westmoreland’s intelligence apparatus had deliberately underreported the size and strength of enemy forces in South Vietnam. The motive was to give credence to all the optimistic claims that the U.S. military was in control of the war and moving toward an inevitable and decisive victory. But as a result of those doctored estimates, U.S. troops in the field, political leaders in Washington, and the American people were unprepared for the scope and intensity of the Tet offensive the enemy launched in January 1968, a full-scale assault that had a devastating impact on the course of the war.

Although I was fascinated by what Crile told me, I felt I had to decline the offer. I explained that because of my 60 Minutes obliga-tions, there was no way I could find time to get involved in such an ambitious undertaking. Crile persisted, assuring me that he would do all the time-consuming spadework and even most of the interviews.

He went on to say that, given the documentary’s explosive nature, the

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main correspondent had to be a seasoned reporter who had clout and authority, especially when it came to interviewing. Elaborating on that point, Crile said that much of the broadcast would be structured around interviews with Westmoreland and other high-ranking officials; Crile needed a correspondent who wouldn’t hesitate to press them for answers to tough and challenging questions. I found his argument persuasive, so I changed my mind and told Crile he could count on me, as long as he understood that my work for 60 Minutes had to remain my top priority.

Over the next several months, Crile diligently tracked down the information he needed to build his case, and true to his word, he kept my participation to a minimum. He did check in from time to time to let me know how he was progressing, and the more he told me, the more I came to realize how damaging the evidence was about the military intelligence operation in Saigon. Among the more startling revelations were those made by some of Westmoreland’s own top deputies, who acknowledged—for the first time in public—that there had been a conspiracy to “cook the books” and prevent the full strength of enemy forces from being disclosed in intelligence reports.

No indictment was more damning than one made by General Joseph McChristian, who had been the chief intelligence officer in Saigon.

He told Crile that when he had submitted accurate estimates of enemy troop strength, they were suppressed by Westmoreland. He described that and similar decisions to provide misleading numbers as

“falsification of the facts.” Crile then asked if such deceptions violated any statutes in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and McChristian replied, “Not that I’m aware of. But there’s something on a ring that I wear from West Point that the motto is: ‘Duty, Honor, Country.’ It’s dishonorable.”

That was the kind of stuff I had in my arsenal of notes when the

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time came for my interview with Westmoreland. Although Crile had sent a letter spelling out the topics I’d be focusing on, Westy greeted me warmly and evinced no sense of foreboding. He seemed to regard me as a kindred spirit, and I could understand that. During my brief assignment in Vietnam, I had always treated him with the utmost respect, even after I became highly skeptical of the war and his assessment of it. But once our interview began, it did not take long for his mood to darken.

I brought up the critical moment in the spring of 1967 when General McChristian and his chief deputy, Colonel Gains Hawkins, came across information that enemy forces were much larger than previous intelligence reports had indicated. They presented that new information to Westmoreland along with a proposal that the official reports be revised to reflect the dramatic increase in the estimates of enemy strength. Westmoreland refused to accept their recommendation, and when I asked him why, he replied, “I didn’t accept it because of political reasons.”

“What’s the political reason?” I asked. “Why would it have been a political bombshell?”

“Because the people in Washington were not sophisticated enough to understand and evaluate this thing, and neither was the media.”

This was a stunning admission that cut straight to the heart of the matter. By the spring of 1967, both Westmoreland and his commander in chief, Lyndon Johnson, knew that neither Congress nor the American public would tolerate another major escalation in Vietnam, especially one on a scale necessary to defeat an enemy nearly twice as large as previous intelligence estimates had indicated. They also knew that such an escalation would have fanned the flames of the growing antiwar movement and touched off a fresh round of critical blasts from an increasingly hostile press. Those concerns were