Reed Irvine Editor
HOW THE MEDIA HELPED DEFEAT US
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The use of psychology and propaganda as a weapon of war is not a communist invention. The British, and indeed we ourselves, developed the art to a high degree in World War I. We recognized its great importance and made full use of it in World War II.
But for some strange reason, we downgraded these tools in the two wars we have fought against the communists in Korea and Vietnam.
Just as the French abandoned the fight in lndochina because they had been psychologically defeated at home, so the United States abandoned Vietnam because it lost the will to do what it had the power to do.
The technique our enemy used to achieve this was outlined 40 years ago in a book by Edward Banse, Germany Prepares for War. Banse wrote:
It is essential to attack the enemy nation's weak spots-and what nation has not its weak spots? You must undermine, crush, break down its resistance and convince it that it is being deceived, misled and brought to destruction by its own government. This is done to cause it to lose confidence in the justice of its cause so that the opposition at home...may raise its head and make trouble more successfully than before.
The original well-knit, solid, powerful fabric of the enemy nation must be gradually disintegrated, broken down, rotted, so that it falls to pieces like a fungus when one treads on it in the woods.
Our communist enemy was greatly aided in accomplishing this by the fact that we were fighting an undeclared war.
HOW THE MEDIA HELPED DEFEAT US
We refused to apply the restraints on journalists and the press that were taken for granted in earlier wars.
One result was that in the midst of the war, journalists and others were able to visit the enemy country. Those permitted to do so were carefully screened by the enemy, and care was taken to insure that only those who would help the enemy's psychological warfare were admitted. There were, of course, journalists who saw that this was folly and who said so. For example. Crosby Noyes, foreign editor of the Washington Star, said this in a column published January 3, 1967:
This is the first U.S. government in history to have committed American lives to the outcome of a war and at the same time permitted-one could almost say invited-the systematic subversion of this commit ment by the press...It is simply incredible that a government can ship 400,000 men to fight in a war and at the same time cheerfully accede to visits by reporters, hand-picked by the enemy: to tour his ter ritory and write straight-faced dispatches on what they are told and shown.
The folly of the government is compounded by the divisions of public opinion that exist in this country over the war. No matter how conscientious the visiting reporters may try to be, it is inevitable that what they see and hear will serve the cause of the enemy and further confuse opinion at home. Their dispatches are already being seized on by domestic critics who for years have done everything in their power to subvert the effort in Vietnam.
Among those who made the pilgrimage to Hanoi and assisted in disseminating Hanoi's propaganda were Harrison Salisbury and Anthony Lewis of The New York Times. Salisbury was criticized for having sent back Hanoi propaganda handouts without indicating the source. Lewis filed a story carried on page one that was designed to discredit the effectiveness of the mining of Haiphong harbor. It was soon shown that his facts were totally wrong.
Charles Coilingwood of CBS was another visitor to Hanoi who proved helpful in their propaganda offensive. On April 8, 1968 Radio Hanoi broadcast Collingwood's interview with the communist regime's foreign minister. The Vietnamese used the interview to denounce President Johnson, to appeal to the opposition, and to convince the American people that they were being deceived and misled. According to Radio Hanoi, Coilingwood asked: "Is there any specific message that you would like to convey to the American people through the medium of CBS?"
The reply was an appeal to the Americans to halt their "war of aggression," to question why their sons had to fight and die in Vietnam, to appreciate that Vietnam was simply fighting for independence as America once did, etc. The formula followed Ewald Banse's prescription perfectly.
A captured Vietcong document, "Report on Propa ganda and Foreign Affairs," in 1967 spelled out the goals of the communist propaganda offensive. Among the themes they were ordered to stress were "the fascist and dictatorial" character of the South Vietnamese government, American "crimes" and the "barbarous character" of the U.S. military activities, U.S. "neocolonialism" and the inevitability of a U.S. defeat. These became familiar themes in the American news media in the ensuing years.
It was not only the journalists who journeyed to Hanoi that helped disseminate the propaganda. The veteran Scripps-Howard correspondent, Jim Lucas, who covered Vietnam from 1964 to 1968, pointed out in testimony before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee that there were serious problems with the reporters stationed in South Vietnam. He recommended that a hard look be taken at the accreditation procedures, and he favored the imposition of censorship in the war zone. He pointed out that some of the correspondents "don't give a damn how many lives they cost if they can launch a successful career." He added: "Some simply do not like us. They make no bones about it. They are not on our side." In another forum, Lucas went so far as to say that he did not think The New York Times had had a reporter in Saigon who was on our side in all the years he was in Vietnam.
Tet: A Victory the Media Lost The turning point in the Vietnam propaganda war came in February 1968. The communists launched their Tet Truce offensive, and they suffered a stunning military defeat. They expected the South Vietnamese in the cities to rise uo and support them. It did not happen, and the Vietcong elite were wiped out.
But the American news media told the story differently. TV was especially effective in convincing the public that they had been deceived when their leaders told them that great progress had been made in bringing the situation in Vietnam under control. Edward Jay Epstein described how the networks covered the story and the impact their distoned portrayal had on the country in an article in TV Guide on October 6, 1973. One result was that support for the war, according to the polls, sank from 74 per cent at the beginning of February to less than 50 per cent two months later.
Epstein relates that later in the year an NBC producer suggested that they correct the record and air a program "showing that Tet had indeed been a decisive victory for America." He said this was rejected by Robert J. Northshield, a senior executive, who later explained that Tet was already "established in the pubUc's mind as a defeat and therefore it was an American defeat."
This is the first battle Americans won in the field and lost in the news media.
The Tale of Two Massacres One of the war propaganda goals emphasized by Ewald Banse was "to fill the nation with hatred and bitterness towards the enemy." In the past this was accomplished by emphasizing the brutality of the enemy, making him both hated and feared. For example, in World War I, we had a Committee on Public Information which organized 75,000 speakers throughout the country who were trained to talk about German war crimes and atrocities, among other things.
In the Vietnam War, our own media downplayed the atrocities and crimes of the communist enemy and perversely focused massive attention on crimes committed by Americans and our South Vietnamese allies. The result was that we filled the nation with self-doubt, if not self-hate.
The American news media reported relatively little about the organized terror campaign of the communists in Vietnam. This was noted by Senator James O. Eastland in The Human Cost of Communism in Vietnam, published by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee in 1972. Senator Eastland asked: "If the Free World knew little or nothing of this day-to-day terror despite the presence of hundreds of correspondents in South Vietnam, what chance is there that the Free World would know anything at all about the bloodletting that would inevitably take place in South Vietnam if the Communists came to power, expelled the western press corps and then proceeded to deal with their enemies?"
We know of the appalling bloodbath the communists inflicted on the population of Hue when they occupied that city for 26 days in 1968. After the area was retaken, mass graves containing the bodies of their victims were discovered. The confirmed total came to 2,750 bodies, and the bodies of another 3000 missing civilians have never been found. Some of the victims had been shot, with their hands tied behind their backs. Others had been clubbed and some had even been buried alive.
It was established that the killings were not carded out in the heat of battle, but on the basis of explicit orders. The blood-lists were prepared, and the communists moved through the streets methodically, pulling the victims from their homes. Hanoi did not deny the atrocity after the hidden graves were found. Hanoi Radio on April 27, 1969, made this comment on the discovery of the graves: "...in order to cover up their cruel acts, the puppet administration in Hue recently played the farce of setting up a socalled committee for the search for burial of the hooligan lackeys who had owed blood debts to the Tri-Thien Hue compatriots and who were annihilated by the Southern armed forces and people..."
Straightforward reporting of this atrocity would have done much to strengthen the resolve of the American people to never permit the perpetrators of such deeds to take over South Vietnam. It would have required no embellishment, no exaggeration.
In a letter to the Norwegian newspaper, Aftenposten, in September 1973, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the brave Russian writer, charged that the brutal butchery by the Communists at Hue in 1968 "had been lightly noticed and almost immediately forgiven in the West." He charged that this was because "the sympathy of society was on the other side." He added: "It was just too bad that the information did seep into the free press and for a time (very briefly) cause embarrassment (just a tiny bit) to the passionate defenders of that other social system."
Solzhenitsyn was absolutely right about the slight attention paid to the bloodbath at Hue. The Times gave 5 inches to the first report of the massacre on February 12, 1968. It followed up with another story three months later, reporting that the embassy had charged that 1000 civilians had been murdered at Hue. The Washington Post put that story on page 22, giving it 11 column inches. They did add a brief editorial condemning the slaughter, which is more than The Times did.
The Post again alluded to the story in December 1969, when it revealed that 2,750 bodies had been discovered to that date.
By way of contrast, it took 3 1/2 pages of the New York Times index to list all the stories published by The Times on the My Lai Massacre which was committed by Americans, in the months of November and December 1969 alone.
It is said that 347 civilians were killed at My Lai, 6 per cent of the number killed by the communists at Hue. Those killed at My Lai were the victims of combat troops making an attack on the village. They were not plucked from their homes, from lists prepared in advance, and taken out to hidden places, forced to dig their own graves and then shot in cold blood. But the American news media's fascination with My Lai was almost pathological. It did not begin to compare with the Hue massacre in scope or in bestiality. Given the response to the two massacres by the American press, one would have thought the reverse was true.
Syndicated columnist Max Lerner said that the My Lai massacre would take its place in history along with other war outrages-"Malmedy, Lidice, Katyn Forest." He added: "It may well prove the stickiest moral crisis in the history of the Vietnamese war." Lerner significantly did not mention Hue in his list of war outrages. Perhaps he was unaware of what had transpired there, since it was so lightly reported.
Lerner, perhaps like many other Americans, concluded that "the best atonement" that we could make for My Lai was "to get out of the war-systematically, unequivocally, with every possible dispatch." He did not pause to consider that such an action would mean turning all the South over to the butchers of Hue, but again, perhaps he did not know about Hue.
One can only speculate what the course of the war would have been had the American media reported these two massacres in proportion to their enormity.
How CBS Slanted the News Edward Jay Epstein asserts that the three television networks all began treating the war negatively after the Tet offensive. There is evidence that television became a potent influence in turning public opinion against the war effort.
The best documentation of the loading of the television news against the war is provided in the Institute for American Strategy study, TV and National Defense by Dr. Ernest W. Lefever. (Available from AIM for $3.95. postpaid).
Dr. Lefever analyzed all the CBS Evening News programs in the year 1972 to see how they dealt with the war. TV news stories are usually built around a theme. Dr. Lefever counted the identifiable themes in the Vietnam stories, and he found that those that tended to be critical of U.S. policy and our South Viemamese ally were aired 651 times in 1972. Themes supportive of our policies were aired only 153 times. Criticism outnumbered support by 81 per cent to 19 per cent. The most frequent theme was that "U.S. involvement is wrong because the war is cruel, expensive or senseless." This was aired 254 times, or about 5 times a week.
Dr. Lefever concluded: "The preponderant weight of critical CBS reporting and interpretation on Vietnam was directed against the U.S. military presence there, and particularly against U.S. mining and bombing intiatives in the North." He found that CBS had a strong propensity to quote statements made by those who were critical of our policies and wanted us to cut back or get out. These types were quoted 842 times in 1972. On the other hand, the hawks who wanted to see the war pursued more vigorously were qouted a mere 23 times in the year. That is a ratio of 36 to 1.
It is particularly interesting to note that CBS tended to report favorably on North Vietnam more often than it criticized our communist enemy. Dr. Lefever found that 57 per cent of the themes on North Vietnam were favorable and only 43 per cent were unfavorable.
Dr. Lefever comments: "This lopsided reporting is difficult to understand or explain. Obviously, there were developments that warranted criticism in South Vietnam. But what would compel a TV network repeatedly to point to the shortcomings of a wartime ally while almost inevitably overlooking the graver faults of a wartime enemy? Perhaps the norms of objectivity and fair play were subverted by a conviction held by CBS newsmen that the United States was engaged in an illegitimate and unjust war? How else can one explain what appears to be a persistent and thoroughly unprofessional split-level ethic?"
The presentation of the North Vietnamese in a favorable light, overlooking the dictatorial nature of that government as well as the atrocities it had perpetrated upon its own people, was characteristic of CBS coverage of the Vietnam War. Dr. Lefever states: "It portrayed the North Vietnam people as long-suffering and courageous, seeking independence from external oppressors, the last being the mighty United States which was acting like a bully by bombing the North. Hanoi was portrayed as caring properly for American POWs, although they were officially regarded as 'war criminals.' There was not a single story indicating the contrary. During the entire year. CBS Evening News rarely, if ever. broadcast similar favorable comments about South Vietnam ..... CBS failed to present a full or fair picture of opposing viewpoints on the issues of peace negotiations, the problem of American POWs, the nature of the U.S. military presence, or-on a larger canvas-the significance to the United States of the struggle between communist and non-communist forces in Southeast Asia."
While Dr. Lefever's groundbreaking study is concerned only with CBS, there is no reason to think that CBS was unique in its slanting of the news in a way that undermined support for the war and for continued aid to South Vietnam.
Our two great picture magazines, Life and Look, both now defunct contributed their bit. To help undermine morale on the home front. Life on June 23, 1969, devoted 11 pages to printing the photos of American servicemen killed during a week of fighting in South Vietnam.
James Reston of The New York Times boasted of the role played by the media in his column on April 30, 1975, saying: "Maybe the historians will agree that the reporters and the cameras were decisive in the end. They brought the issue of the war to the people, before the Congress or the courts, and forced the withdrawal of American power from Vietnam."
With the incessant pounding delivered by these and other important elements of the American news media, it is little wonder that the originally well-knit, solid, powerful fabric of this nation gradually disintegrated. When the test finally came, and we were asked to indicate whether we would continue to supply South Vietnam with material and moral support we showed all the strength of a fungus.
COVERING UP THE CONSEQUENCES If we are to think seriously about the steps we must take in our defense, the attention of the American people is going to have to be focused on the causes and the magnitude of the disaster that has befallen us in Southeast Asia.
Unfortunately, the major organs of the media seem to be engaged in an effort to cover up the disaster. The New York Times and the columnists that it syndicates in papers throughout the country are taking the lead in this. Here are some examples of the soothing syrup The Times is currently dispensing.
"Despite events in Vietnam, United States sources of power and influence remain intact." (April 13, 1975, index description of news story).
"The military situation in Cambodia and South Vietnam could scarcely be more bleak...But even against this lurid local disaster, it is a little melodramatic to make sweeping prophecies about the future of America and world politics. This has been the trouble with Washington's policy in Southeast Asia from the start. Having over-estimated Saigon's importance at the beginning, it now makes things worse to exaggerate the losses at the end." (James Reston's column, April 13, 1975, emphasis added).
"No serious observer could have believed that the world stature of the United States was hopelessly entwined with the fate of a Cambodian general named Lon Nol in Phnom Penh-if the President and Secretary of State had not said so often that it was. After all the history of the past decade, no one could have concluded that the honor of the United States was a stake in sustaining Saigon's dwindling defense perimeter-if the President and Secretary of State had not repeatedly assigned such a inflated extension of moral duty to this country." (Editorial, New York Times, April 10, 1975).
On March 27, The Times dispensed an especially large dose of its soothing syrup in a 44-column inch story by Leslie Gelb headed, "skepticism on Domino Theory." Mr. Gelb assured us that despite anything the President or Secretary of State might say, "the intelligence community has consistently rejected" the notion that other countries would lose faith in the word of the U.S. if we failed the Vietnamese and Cambodians. Mr. Gelb then took his readers on a quick tour of neighboring Asian countries. He noted that The Thais were showing increasing interest in dealing with the Communists, but he saw nothing significant in that, since his administration sources told him that Washington had been urging such a course on Thailand for four years.
Mr. Gelb next discussed the Philippines. His sources informed him that they saw no problems there. There was no sign that the Philippine government was considering any reappraisal of its position, or that it would ask us to withdraw from our bases there. Just three weeks later The Times was obliged to inform its readers that President Marcos of the Philippines had declared that recent changes in Asia had put his country in the "front line" of U.S. defenses with no guarantee of American support in case of attack. Marcos said that American bases in the Philippines might be more of a liability than an asset, and he wanted to open talks with the U.S. about them as soon as possible.
Mr. Gelb did note some signs of official mistrust of the U.S. in Indonesia as a result of Indochina developments, but he passed that off saying: "American diplomats were said to feel that strains in relations between the two Governments had already been growing before the deterioration of the situation in Vietnam and Cambodia."
He also found a "a more serious impact" in Korea, but he saw nothing to worry about there, since the Koreans are so dependent on the U.S. Mr. Gelb did not mention the impact on North Korea, whose leader, Kim Il Sung, issued a statement on April 19 warning the U.S. to withdraw all its troops from South Korea. Kim declared that if there were an uprising in South Korea, his country would "not just look with folded arms but will strongly support the South Korean people."
The Washington Post was dispensing a remarkably similar brand of soothing syrup. The Post took President Marcos's statement in stride, saying that we should be neither surprised nor alarmed if various Asian governments should undertake a broad review of their policies in the wake of the Vietnam disaster. The Post in an April 20 editorial said those governments would be ignoring their own plain interests if they did not try to adjust to America's shrinking involvement and interest in Asia. The Post professed to see nothing very disturbing about the prospect of losing our bases in the Philippines, since we were no longer interested in "containing" China and were falling back from the Asian mainland. While we still had commitments to Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, perhaps Guam would suffice as a base for guaranteeing the security of those countries. Indeed, ending on a note that could not be very reassuring even to those allies, The Post said: "The principal test of American policy in the new, post-Vietnam Asia, after all, will not be simply whether we can live up to the letter of each and every past commitment but whether we can adjust to change."
The Raw Reality The Times and The Post and other elements of the news media that have helped bring about the erosion of America's will to resist the Communists in Indochina could hardly be expected to inform their readers and viewers of the probable results of the debacle they helped bring about. There has been remarkably little mention of the thinking that underlay our original commitment to Vietnam, apart from deprecatory references to the "domino theory." As we listen to the tinkling of the dominoes, it may be well to reflect on the considerations that impelled our leaders to act as they did ten and twenty years ago.
Hubert Humphrey, then Vice President, in October 1967, warned that a communist victory in Vietnam "would stimulate the appetite for more aggression and conquest. It would represent a defeat not only for America but for freedom anywhere." The Vice President said, "The threat to our security is in Asia, and we are fighting there not only for the Vietnamese but for ourselves, for the future of our country."
Senator Thomas Dodd spelled out the consequences of our failure to stand firm in Vietnam in a speech delivered to the Senate on December 8, 1967. It is such an important statement, timely even today, that we will quote it at some length. The Senator said:
There has been precious little thought, unfortunately, about the cost of defeat. Let there be no mistake on this point: if we are defeated in Vietnam...then it vdll mark the total eclipse of America as a great nation and the beginning of the end for the entire free world.
If it were not for the reality of American power, Soviet and Chinese communism would long ago have overrun all of Europe and Asia and Africa. For our power has, in fact, served to guarantee the freedom of the neutralist nations as well as of those nations allied with us.
But freedom could not long survive if the free nations, and the Communist nations, should ever conclude that American power is meaningless because American commitments are meaningless.
And what other conclusion could the free nations draw if, despite our repeated commitments to the freedom and security of South Vietnam, we should now abandon South Vietnam to a Communist takeover?
If we withdraw from Vietnam, I cannot conceive of a single Asian or European or any other country again accepting an assurance of protection from the United States or entering into an alliance with it. Nor could they be blamed for this.
After citing the views of a number of Asian leaders that supported this argument, Senator Dodd went on to say:
If we were now to abandon Vietnam, the ensuing eclipse of American prestige, and the resulting decay of our alliances and the impossibility of constructing new ones, would, in turn, encourage Peiping and Moscow to further step up the tempo of subversion and aggression throughout the world.
It would encourage the Communists to launch more "wars of national liberation" because of our manifest inability to cope with this kind of aggression. It might very well confront us with the problem of a "hemispheric Vietnam" about which the Communist theoreticians in Havana and Peiping and Moscow have long been talking.
We might then be compelled to fight under far more disadvantageous circumstances and at much greater cost. Indeed, we would have to fight with our backs to the wall.
Instead of reducing our problems and saving the lives of American soldiers, the abandonment of Vietnam would increase our problems, would increase the possibility of local involvements in many parts of the world, and would increase the danger of all-out war.
The Prophecy Is Being Fulfilled The loss of American prestige and the erosion of our alliances foreseen by Senator Dodd is now occurring before our very eyes.
Vermont Royster, writing in the Wall Street Journal of April 16, said:
Is the United States-militarily, economically and politically-now a declining world power?
In varying forms this is the question Europeans are now putting to each other in conversation, in the councils of political leaders and in the press...The immediate cause of it, of course, is the situation in Saigon, to which the European press, radio and television is giving enormous attention, treating it not so much as a South Vietnamese military debacle as a disaster for the United States...
It is both U.S. resolve and its power that is being doubted in the wake of the South Vietnamese collapse.
Vincent Ryder, the diplomatic correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph, provided an illustration of Royster's point. He wrote that new pressures from the U.S.S.R. could now be expected in Asia and the Middle East, saying: "Moscow can be reasonably confident that any American effort to counter the moves will run into opposition in Congress, where any suggestion of fresh overseas commitments raises the spectre of Vietnam."
And in the Middle East itself, a Lebanese paper, al-Bayraq, said: "Vietnam has been abandoned at a time when the U.S.S.R. is giving its strongest backing to its communist allies...The U.S. has lost the confidence of people...no state has any trust in American staying power."
There are foreign observers who disagree with these views. For example, the Washington correspondent of France-Soir derided the notion that the U.S. had become an impotent giant, saying: "The U.S. remains the first economic power in the world...Militarily it maintains superiority over the Russians regardless of nuclear arms limitations agreements because of its superior technology."
However, the greatest power in the world carries little weight if the will to use it effectively is lacking. No one questions America's great material wealth, its potent military force, or its impressive industrial and technological resources. What has now been called into question is our will to use our might to halt further communist encroachments.
As General Giap predicted six years ago, America's will to use its great power to defend South Vietnam was eventually destroyed. (The North Vietnamese general, the conqueror of Dien Bien Phu. Vo Nguyen Giap, in an interview published in The Washington Post on April 6, 1969, said: I'll prove to you now that the Americans are beaten both militarily and politically. To prove their military defeat, I'll go back to their political defeat, which is the basis of the whole thing...The United States has a strategy based on arithmetic...But arithmetical strategy doesn't work here. If it did. they'd already have exterminated us.") As Senator Dodd predicted in 1967. our failure to honor our commitment to South Vietnam has undermined our credibility throughout the world.
When President Ford and Secretary Kissinger discussed this disastrous result of our failure to support our Vietnamese allies, they were actually chided by some of our leading newspapers for mentioning the matter. The editorial writers of these journals appeared to take the view that the rest of the world would not notice the loss of our credibility if we ourselves did not mention it.
As a result. The New York Times, has told its readers almost nothing about the widespread statements in the foreign press that fully confirmed what Ford and Kissinger said about adverse foreign reactions to our conduct. AIM's Chairman, Reed Irvine, pointed this out at the New York Times shareholders' meeting on April 22. The Chairman of the Times, Mr. Sulzberger, could neither explain nor defend this failure to report vital information.
It was bad enough that our news media did little to remind the public and Congress of this probable result while there was still time to prevent the disaster. It is inexcusable that influential papers should now fail to report fully what the actual consequences have been. Rather than fulfill their duty to enlighten the public, they have gone so far as to urge that our leaders also follow their example and sweep the matter under the rug.
The public is being badly served because it is badly informed. It is being steered in a direction that can only result in the fulfillment of Senator Dodd's dire predictions. Knowledge of the truth may keep us free, but its concealment has nurtured and is continuing to nurture public support of a neo-isolationism that could lead to disastrous consequences for all the free world.
General Giap was asked when the Americans would be definitely beaten, and he replied: "Oh, this isn't a war that can be won in a few years. War against the United States takes time, time. They'll be beaten with time. worn out. And to wear them out we have to go on, to endure..."
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THE BLOODBATH COVERUP IS ON A curtain of silence has already descended over much of South Vietnam and Cambodia. Douglas Pike, the expert on the Viet Cong and the Hue massacre, predicted that when that curtain descended "the night of the long knives" would begin. It is well known that the communists employ terror as a matter of policy. Lenin criticized the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution because it "only terrorized active resistance." He emphasized that it was important to break down passive resistance, "which doubtless is the most harmful and dangerous of all." The policy in Russia, China, Cuba and North Vietnam has been to destroy those who might, because of their character or social origins, oppose their new masters.
There is no reason to believe that policy will change. The evidence that it has not changed is already flowing in from the areas of South Vietnam occupied by the communists and from Cambodia.
Following the pattern they established in dealing with the Hue massacre, our news media are ignoring or downplaying this evidence. On April 18, George Meany, President of the AFL-CIO dispatched a letter to members of Congress in which he pointed out that the State Department had evidence of systematic terrorism against civilian populations in Vietnam. He said that viewed in the light of the communists' history of the systematic use of terror, one could conclude that the bloodhath had begun. He suggested that the reports revealed only the tip of the iceberg.
Mr. Meany declared that these facts were not being well publicized, and he was right. Not only had the press largely ignored the evidence readily available from the State Department, but they also ignored George Meany's powerfully worded letter.
Mr. Meany said the most important issue now before us was saving the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese who face certain destruction because they stood by our side. He said we could not abandon the masses of human beings who will pay with their lives for their loyalty to us. He wanted the government to make it clear to the USSR and China that they should help restrain Hanoi, saying that detente would never survive the slaughter of our friends in South Vietnam. He called on Congress to support bold action, including the use of American troops, in behalf of our moral principles.
AIM had made numerous inquiries of the newspapers and wire services to find our why George Meany's letter was not reported to the public. We encountered many excused, but the general attitude seerod to be lack of interest in the subject.
The press is showing unusual caution. It seems that it does not want to report communist atrocities without solid confirmarion. However, it is quite willing to report the absence of atrocities, on the basis of communist claims, without verification. Time in its April 28 issue said: "Even discounting the bias of the Hanoi press, Western observers were reasonably satisfied that the communist conquest of almost three-quarters of South Vietnam was proceeding so far without widespread bloodbaths or reprisals." But according to reports from our embassy in Saigon, more civilians were killed at Ban Me Thuot alone than were killed at My Lai. This included murder by driving large trucks at high speed through masses of civilian refugees. Time did not even bother to list that in its catalog of atrocities.
Newsweek noted that the Saigon embassy was bombarding Washington with cables indicating that "a reign of retribution" was underway, but Newsweek discounted this because they had not been able to locate eyewitnesses. They dismissed the evidence provided by the American embassy on the ground that these represented "only the most extreme cases."
The New York Times was also well aware of the evidence in the possession of the Embassy, but it was also apparently following the policy of ignoring it. The Times failed to carry an AP story on April 26 detailing in terms as heartrending as anything that came out of My Lai the murder by the Khmer Rouge of Cambodian civilians trying to flee to Thailand. The Washington Post told us it carried the story in the first edition and then dropped it.
NBC Nightly News on April 17 carried a 21 second story about the massacre at Ban Me Thuot. We could find no evidence of any other atrocities reported by NBC Nightly News.
AIM's chairman. Reed J. Irvine, has written to The Times, Newsweek, and RCA (NBC) about the poor coverage of the bloodbath stories. He asked Robert W. Samoff, Chairman of the Board of RCA. if he would be prepared to discuss this matter at the RCA annual shareholders meeting in New York on May 6.
CBS PROVES OUR POINT CBS provided documentation of the charges in this Report in their 2 1/2-hour documentary on the Vietnam War aired April 29. They did not directly discuss the role of the news media in undermining American morale and support for the war, but in reviewing their own coverage of the war, they proved our point.
Incredibly, CBS is still claiming that the Tet offensive was a defeat for us, saying:
A lot of soldiers including Gen. Westmoreland will still argue that the communists lost and we won at Tet, that the communists captured none of their objectives or could not hold on to what they captured, that they suffered severe casualties.
But to those of us who were there, Tet suggested that all those years of search and destroy, of defoliation. of secret bombings of Laos, of pacification had not meant a thing...nothing that the American armed forces had done had really changed anything.
Even though Eric Sevareid had said Solzhenitsyn was wrong in saying that the Hue massacre had been lightly covered, CBS did not even mention this atrocity in the 2 1/2-hour program. My Lai, however, came in for lots of attention.
The panic of the people as the communist armies advanced was shown as disgraceful cowardice.
Nothing was said about the past and prospective bloodbaths that caused such panic.
It was suggested that the communists won because they were braver and had built a better society. Nothing was said about the fact that their patrons had supplied them abundantly with arms, while the U.S. Congress welched on the commitments we had made.
The South Vietnamese were portrayed as cowards, unworthy of our support. Little or nothing was said about the very heavy causualties they had suffered and the many brave battles they had fought, such as the defense of An Loc.
CBS had the gall to run the communist propaganda films indicating that our POWs were well treated. They did not even mention their brutal torture.
Ten commentators were heard from at the end of the program. Only one mentioned that our credibility had been seriously impaired by our behavior in Vietnam and that this posed a serious danger.
After 2 1/2, hours of material that misinformed, manipulated and misled the audience, Walter Cronkite concluded: "We...cannot ever again allow ourselves to be misinformed, manipulated, misled..."
Except by CBS News. Walter?