Says Westmoreland May Have Been Pressured by Higher-Ups : Ex-CIA Aide Tells of ‘Problem’ With CBS Documentary

The jury trying Gen. William C. Westmoreland’s $120-million libel suit against CBS was told Monday that a key figure in the production of the television documentary had written a letter three days before it was aired, saying that he had a “major problem” with the project.

But the author of the letter, former Central Intelligence Agency analyst Sam Adams, told the jury he had not meant to express reservations about the program.

“The problem was not with the broadcast, which I thought was accurate and important,” Adams testified as Westmoreland’s lawyers wound up their cross-examination of him. “It portrayed a massive falsification of statistics . . . that Gen. Westmoreland had set in train . . . . “

Raise Issue of Doubts

As they completed their third day of cross-examination, Westmoreland’s lawyers attempted to show that Adams had doubts about the central theme of the program--that in 1967 Westmoreland conspired to produce false enemy troop figures.

Adams, who quit the CIA in 1973, was a paid consultant on the documentary, “The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception.” Named as one of the co-defendants in Westmoreland’s suit against the network, he was the leadoff defense witness in the trial, now in its 15th week.

The letter quoted by attorneys for the retired general was written by Adams to retired Col. Gains Hawkins, who was the Westmoreland aide responsible for keeping enemy strength figures. He was one of several officers interviewed in the documentary who claimed that statistics on enemy forces were arbitrarily cut in the months before the January, 1968, Tet offensive in Vietnam.

Questioned by Westmoreland attorney David Dorsen on Monday, Adams contended that the “problem” he mentioned was that he continued to believe that Westmoreland might have been subjected to pressure from his superiors in playing down enemy troop numbers.

In his letter to Hawkins, Adams said the program “tends to pin the rap on Gen. Westmoreland, but it probably belongs higher than that.”

On the witness stand, Adams testified that at the time of the broadcast, he had thought the question of political pressure on Westmoreland “was another story that bore following up.”

But there was no evidence in hand to show that Westmoreland’s superiors knew what was going on, he told the jury, and “Mr. (George) Crile (the program’s producer) and I went with the evidence we had.”

As he neared the end of his testimony, Adams insisted that as the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, Westmoreland bore responsibility for any alteration of enemy troop statistics.

Likening the general’s responsibilities to those of a ship’s captain, Adams told the jury: “Gen. Westmoreland was responsible for what his subordinates had done, even though he might not have been aware of every detail.”

Before bringing up the letter to Hawkins, Dorsen suggested that at the time of the broadcast, Adams was uneasy with its use of the word “conspiracy.”

Believes in Conspiracy

Adams acknowledged that he might have preferred to describe the episode as a “tragic event,” but he firmly denied that he had ever backed away from the allegation of a conspiracy.

“I believe there was a conspiracy,” he testified. “There was an attempt to do wrong . . . and they did it in secret.”

Long before the CBS production got under way, Adams called for the inspector general of the Army to investigate the controversy and suggested that Westmoreland had violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice by making false official statements.