Former Intelligence Officer Testifies He Was Ordered to Trim Count of Viet Cong

A former Army intelligence officer testified in federal court here Monday that he was ordered to arbitrarily cut an estimate of the Viet Cong’s political cadre by nearly 50,000 persons during a crucial stage of the Vietnam War.

Testifying on behalf of CBS in the $120-million libel suit filed by retired Gen. William C. Westmoreland against the network, retired Maj. Michael F. Dilley said he considered the decision to reduce the estimate “improper, unethical and dishonest.”

An accurate estimate of the enemy political cadre was important because those forces “controlled the military operations as well as the political operations” in the war, he said.

1967 Intelligence Study

In early 1967, he told the jury, a new intelligence study produced evidence that the enemy political cadre was far larger than previously believed and the official estimate was increased from 39,000 to 139,000.

But only a few months later, he said, Col. Gains Hawkins, Westmoreland’s staff expert on enemy strength statistics, ordered him to reduce the estimate.

He said he cut the figure by 25%, but Hawkins returned to him and said: “I want to be able to support an estimate of between 90,000 and 94,000.”

Deception Claimed

In its 1982 documentary, “The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception,” CBS claimed that Westmoreland deceived his superiors by producing misleading enemy strength figures to support a contention that the war was going well.

On the program, Hawkins told of briefing Westmoreland on sharply higher enemy intelligence figures in May, 1967, and of his belief that the higher numbers were not acceptable to the U.S. commander.

Through much of 1967, Westmoreland’s command and analysts of the Central Intelligence Agency carried on a running debate over the size of the enemy force in the war, with the CIA contending that the Army figure was at least 200,000 too low.

During key meetings, Hawkins defended the official estimates of the Westmoreland command, but in the telecast he said he did not agree with them. He is scheduled to testify as one of CBS’ last major witnesses in the trial.

Sharp Cross-Examination

Westmoreland’s attorneys sharply cross-examined Dilley on Monday, producing an acknowledgement that he had not attended key briefings and meetings where the issue was argued, and that Hawkins was the only one of the key participants that he knew.

They also produced evidence that the office charged with counting the enemy political cadre had made estimates in the range of 90,000 even before Hawkins ordered Dilley to cut the estimate to that number.

But Dilley insisted that he had no recollection of such estimates being forwarded from his political order of battle section at the Combined Intelligence Center in Saigon.