Producer Defends Methods of Westmoreland Program

A CBS producer, testifying for 10 days in Gen. William C. Westmoreland’s $120-million libel trial, defended his production techniques for the network documentary that accused the general of misrepresenting enemy troop strength during the Vietnam War.

George Crile, a defendant in the suit, never wavered in his testimony about the program, “The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception.” He was called as a witness for Westmoreland and will also testify for CBS when the network puts on its defense.

Crile, who ended 10 days of testimony Friday, said he got the idea for the documentary from co-defendant Sam Adams, a former CIA analyst. Crile edited a 1975 article by Adams on the estimates of enemy strength while he worked at Harper’s magazine.

He explained what was included or excluded from the broadcast and why. He even went into the technical aspects of filming interviews, such as using only one camera.

He often went into long lectures on the thesis of the broadcast: that the estimate of enemy size was suppressed to make it look as though the United States was winning a war of attrition. Judge Pierre N. Leval frequently admonished Crile for straying in his testimony.

Westmoreland attorney Dan Burt asked Crile why he did not use congressional testimony by George Allen, deputy chief of the CIA’s Vietnamese Affairs staff in 1967.

While appearing before the House Select Committee on Intelligence in 1967, Allen was asked whether there was an attempt by intelligence experts to “deceive.”

“Well, there was no effort to deceive people,” Allen testified.

Crile testified that Allen told him later he had been “taken aside by, I believe, the general counsel of the CIA and told to answer questions as narrowly as possible, not to pick a fight with the military,” which was pushing for the lower estimates.

Crile said Allen told him that he was “put into a troubling dilemma--a straitjacket. Mr. Allen said he felt very, very badly about it.”

Crile also admitted not using portions of an interview with former intelligence Cmdr. James Meacham, whose letters to his wife criticizing the Army’s estimates were introduced as evidence.

In the interview, not broadcast, Meacham had said he did not falsify intelligence.

“The only thing he was doing (in the interview) was he decided he did not want to go on national television,” Crile testified.

He said Meacham was “reluctant to characterize his own language” in letters he wrote to his wife 18 years ago.

The trial will resume Monday.