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Related Media Monitors and Columns Reed Irvine's Letter to the Chairman of CNN Reed Irvine's Letter to the Managing Editor of TIME CNN NewsStand CNN NewsStand
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June 22, 1998 CNN, TIME ON THE HOT SEAT Both CNN and Time have launched what they promise will be a thorough investigation of their joint story, "Valley of Death," that was aired on their new TV magazine show, "NewsStand, CNN & TIME" on June 7 and a follow-up program on June 14. Time, and presumably CNN as well, are also taking a hard look at a companion story that ran in the June 15 issue of Time titled, "Did the U.S. Drop Nerve Gas?" by April Oliver and Peter Arnett, the CNN staffers who respectively produced and narrated the TV show. The program and article charged that sarin, a deadly nerve gas, had been used in Laos in a 1970 raid by Special Forces known as Operation Tailwind. CNN and Time may have anticipated, and perhaps hoped, that their "scoop" would set off an investigation by the Pentagon or Congress. Secretary of Defense Cohen promptly announced that he had ordered the military to investigate the charges. But the TV program and the article stirred up a torrent of protest from Special Forces veterans and the Pentagon. They were outraged by the charges that Operation Tailwind, had been mounted to kill American military defectors working with the North Vietnamese army in Laos and that deadly nerve gas had been used. These charges were denounced as totally false and ludicrous. CNN claimed they had spent eight months researching the story, interviewing over 200 people. But that claim does not make the story any more credible. It only makes the quality of the reporting look worse. One could understand, but not defend, getting the story so wrong if the program had been slapped together in a rush to get it on the air for the debut of "NewsStand," but when that much work produces such major falsehoods the only explanation that comes to mind is malice—reckless disregard of the truth. The result is one that neither CNN nor Time anticipated. They, the investigators, are now investigating themselves. On June 19, Tom Johnson, the chairman and CEO of CNN, responding to an Accuracy in Media critique, said he had ordered a thorough investigation of the program. Acknowledging that he had his concerns about the program, he said, "If we’ve blown it, we’re going to say we’ve blown it." Walter Isaacson, the managing editor of Time, responded similarly to our detailed complaint. He said he had told CNN that if Time’s investigation could not verify the accuracy of the charges, it would report that to its readers. A week after the first program aired, Gen. Perry Smith, CNN’s military consultant, informed Tom Johnson that he was going to resign because the senior officials at CNN had refused to issue a retraction based on the evidence he had gathered that proved that the poison gas charge was false. With a few phone calls, he had learned that the records showed that the only gas used was CS, a non-lethal tear gas used to protect the rescue phase of the operation. Johnson refused to overrule the decision made by CNN President Richard Kaplan, who showed himself to be ethically challenged when he worked for ABC News. Since then, CNN and Time have been given powerful evidence proving the falsity of their charges. They could find only one participant in Operation Tailwind who insists that nerve gas was used. He attributes health problems he has developed in recent years to exposure to nerve gas 28 years ago. Another participant whose statements implied that nerve gas was used, has distanced himself from that claim, pointing out that he did not actually say that. None of the participants said the mission was to find and kill defectors. There were no American defectors in Laos. CNN aired a follow-up program which made matters worse by suggesting that President Nixon may have been awakened to get his approval for the use of the poison gas. Peter Arnett tried to appease the critics by saying the gas saved the lives of the commandos. But the gas hit them as well as the enemy, and if it had been lethal, many of them would have died. The critics were not appeased, but their anger was not reflected in the coverage by the establishment media. Newsweek broke with the pack and raised serious doubts about the charges made by CNN and Time. But when a news conference featuring several heavy hitters was held by the critics in Washington on June 23, The Washington Times was the only paper that ran a good story about it, and a scathing editorial to boot. The Washington Post, The New York Times and the TV networks ignored the damning evidence that was presented. If CNN and Time conduct honest investigations, they will have to make some very painful apologies. When Dateline NBC was caught faking test crashes to show that some General Motors pickup trucks would burst into flames, the president of NBC News and members of the Dateline senior staff got the ax. That’s the example CNN should follow if it wants to save its credibility. |
