intelligence
officials" and "Some U.
Manufacturing Consent - Chomsky
How are we to evaluate a judicial process wh
? (A)
the witness gca was In regular contact with outside sources of informaf
ere
"Even the Attorneys for the Bulgarians . . . . "
In assessing how Agca knew so much, Tagliabue allocates only one paragraph to the possibility that Agca was coached. On the other hand, he goes to great pains to stress that Agca knew an awful lot-telephone numbers, personal habits, nicknames. Tagliabue gives as the "simplest explanation" of Agca's knowledge that he had access to books, newspapers, magazines, and other materials from the outside. Interestingly, he fails to mention the numerous prison contacts between Agca and secret service, Mafia, and Vatican agents and emissaries. Agca even wrote a letter to the Vatican complaining of the pressure from its representative in prison (also linked to the Mafia), a fact long blacked out by the Times. These visits would point to the ease with which Agca could have been fed information while in prison. Tagliabue will not admit facts that get into this dangerous territory.
A major question is how Agca knew details about Antonov's apartment when he later admitted to Martella that he had never been there. The Bulgarians and Antonov's defense went to great pains to prove that the information Agca provided about Antonov's apartment had never been divulged in the media before Agca enumerated the details. This implied coaching, as did a mistake in identification where Agca described a characteristic of Antonov's apartment that fitted other apartments in the building, but not Antonov's. Tagliabue says that "Even the attorneys for the Bulgarians acknowledge" that Agca named things not available through reading the papers, as if they were conceding a point, not making a devastating case for coaching. Newspaper work couldn't be more dishonest than this.
"The More Sinister View"
In a single, late paragraph devoted to the possibility of coaching, Tagliabue merely asserts it as a claim, without providing a single supportive point of evidence, although there are many. 6 He uses a double propagandist's put- down-ironically designating the coaching hypothesis as "the more sinister view," and stating that it is "espoused by critics of the case on the political left, including Soviet bloc governments. " Even Tagliabue, in his earlier news
I
I
Appendix 3
BRAESTRUP'S BIG STORY: Some "Freedom House Exclusives"
In "The Tet offensive" (p. 211), we considered the example that has regularly been put forth to substantiate the charge that the media adopt an "adversarial stance" with regard to established power-eoverage ofthe Tet offensive-and the Freedom House study on which this charge is based. As we saw, in this case too the behavior of the media conforms to the expectations of the propa- ganda model, and the major theses advanced in the Freedom House study are refuted even by their own evidence. What remains of their charge is the possibility that media coverage of the Tet offensive was technically incompe- tent, although subordinated to elite requirements. Turning to a closer exami- nation ofthis charge, we find that the shoe is on the other foot: when "Freedom House exclusives" are corrected, the performance of the media appears quite creditable, while the incompetence of the Freedom House study is seen to transcend even the level already demonstrated. That this study has been taken seriously, and permitted to set much of the agenda for subsequent discussion, is a most intriguing fact.
According to Freedom House, television commentary and Newsweek are the
worst offenders in this "extreme case" of journalistic incompetence, so let us begin by reviewing some of their sins. One example to which Braestrup reverts several times is Walter Cronkite's "much publicized half-hour CBS 'special' on the war" on February 27 (Big Seory, I, 158). According to Braestrup Cronkite's "assessment" here is "that U. S. troops would have to garrison th~ countryside" (I, 645). In his foreword, Leonard Sussman properly observes that "We do not expect the reader to accept on faith our various analyses or judgments," and so "the complete texts of many of the reports discussed" are presented, primarily in volume II (I, x). Following his advice, we turn to volume II, where we find the complete text of Cronkite's "special" (180ff. ). There is not even a remote hint of the "assessment" that Braestrup attributes to him.
In this important "special," Braestrup claims, "In effect, Cronkite seemed to say, the ruins, the refugees, the disruption of pacification that came at Tet added up to a defeat for the allies that would force President Johnson to the negotiating table" (I, 158). Cronkite says nothing of the kind. He reports that "there are doubts about the measure of success or setback," noting accurately that "the experts do not agree on the objectives or on the amount of success the communists had in achieving them. " They "failed" in many of their aims, but in a third phase the enemy might "recoup there what he lost in the first two phases. " In what he calls a "speculative, personal, subjective" judgment, Cronkite states that he is "not sure . . . who won and who lost," or to what extent. He concludes that the United States is probably "mired in stalemate," and that historians may conclude that the Tet battle was "a draw"; "To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. " He does not say that Johnson will be "forced" to the negotiating table by a "defeat," but rather that if indeed there is a "stalemate," then "the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could. " Note the typical reiteration of government propaganda concerning American
aims, unsullied by the factual record-enormous in scale, by this time-of U. S. government efforts to undermine democracy and to destroy all popular forces-the NLF, the Buddhist "third force," etc. -in South Vietnam, on the assumption, openly admitted, that the forces placed in power by U. S. violence could not survive political competition. Recall also that in these comments that Freedom House derides, Cronkite reaches essentially the same conclusion as did the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Wheeler, in his summary to the president on the same day as Cronkite's broadcast, and the president's advisers a month later.
We may note also that two weeks earlier, Cronkite had "assessed" the impact of the Communist offensive, on the basis of U. S. and Vietnamese sources, reporting that "first, and simplest, the Vietcong suffered a military defeat" (I, 158). Similarly, on an NBC-TV special of March 10 that Braestrup repeatedly condemns, Howard Tuckner stated that "Militarily the allies won" (I, 159), as did others repeatedly.
Cronkite's "special" is exhibit A in the Freedom House indictment. The example is typical of the relation between their conclusions and the evidence they cite.
Braestrup refers to a television comment by Robert Schakne on February 28 for which he gives the following paraphrase: "In short, the United States would now have to take over the whole war, including the permanently dam- aged pacification program, because of Saigon's failures" (I, 562-63). Braestrup claims further that Schackne attributed "this argument" to Robert Komer. This he calls "a CBS exclusive," his standard term of derision. In fact, "this argument" is yet another "Freedom House exclusive. " What Schackne said, according to Braestrup, is that it was "likely" that Komer was in Washington with General Wheeler to ask for more troops "to help get the Vietnam pacifi- cation program back on the road. " The preceding day, Wheeler had requested that the troop level be raised from 525,000 to 731,756, one primary concern being that "There is no doubt that the RD Program [pacification] has suffered a severe set back," that "To a large extent the VC now control the country- side," and that "US forces will be required in a number of places to assist and encourage the Vietnamese Army to leave the cities and towns and reenter the country. "l While Braestrup's version of Schackne's "argument" has little re- semblance to the actual words he attributes to Schackne, these words were, if anything, understated.
Braestrup then goes on to claim that Cronkite "used the same argument almost verbatim, but with an even stronger conclusion" in a February 28 radio broadcast. There is no hint in the actual broadcast of Braestrup's "argument. " The closest Cronkite came to this "argument" is his statement that ''presuma- bly, A mbassador Komer told a sad tale to President Johnson" (Braestrup's empha- sis). Cronkite then repeated accurately the basic facts presented by Komer in a briefing four days earlier. He concluded that "it seems likely that today Ambassador Komer asked President Johnson for more American troops so that we can permanently occupy the hamlets and fulfill the promise of security [sic] to their residents, a promise the Vietnamese alone apparently cannot honor," the NLF not being Vietnamese, as usual. Apart from the tacit assumption of the propaganda system that the villagers yearn for the fulfillment of this "promise of security" from the NLF, Cronkite's speculation that U. S. troops would have to fulfill a promise that ARVN alone apparently could not honor hardly seems unreasonable, three days after General Westmoreland had stated that "additional U. S. forces would probably be required" (11,159), and that
with them "we could more effectively deny the enemy his objectives"; four days after Komer had described the Tet offensive as a "considerable setback" to pacification; a day after Cronkite had presented a television interview with Captain Donald Jones, deputy pacification adviser for the district regarded as "the bowl of pacification," who said that "for most of the District, pacification does not exist," and travel there is impossible (CBS-TV "special" of February 27, cited above); and one day after General Wheeler had asked for a huge troop increase justified in part by the need to overcome the fact that "To a large extent the VC now control the countryside. "
Television and radio are not alone in being subjected to "Freedom House exclusives. " Here are a few examples.
Exuding contempt and derision, the study informs us that "no one" except for George McArthur (AP) and Don Oberdorfer (Knight) "reported . . . on what happened to Hue's civilians under Vietcong rule" (I, 299). Again demon-
strating his considerable gift for self-refutation, Braestrup cites reports on Vietcong executions, kidnappings, burial of executed civilians in mass graves, etc. , in Hue under Viet Cong rule by Newsweek, UPI, Washington Post, William Ryan, Reuters, New York Times, Time, London Times, and the NBC "Today" show (I, 277, 281-84, 472). On page 283, Braestrup writes that "The television networks, as far as our records show, made no mention of the executions at all"; on page 472, he refutes this claim, noting that on February 28, in an "aftermath film report from Hue . . . at battle's end," the NBC "Today" show "hinted at the Hue massacre with this statement: 'Hundreds of government workers were killed and thrown into temporary graves. ''' A rather broad "hint," it would seem. The example is typical of the Freedom House style of handling evidence.
In this connection, we should observe that the numerous stories on the Hue massacre cited by Braestrup in self-refutation referred to the official allega- tions that 300 to 400 government officials were killed in Hue, a considerable massacre but "only one-tenth of the civilian toll in the fighting," so that "it did not seem like a major story," Gareth Porter comments; he adds that "What made the 'Hue massacre' a major story was the publicizing by U. S. embassy propagandist Douglas Pike, who wrote a pamphlet on the subject in late 1969 at the request of the American ambassador to Saigon, Ellsworth Bunker. " Pike's account was given wide coverage when it appeared and has become the basis for the standard versions since, despite the dubious source: "given the fact that Pike was relying on the Saigon political warfare department for most of his data, which was otherwise unverified, one might have asked for more skepticism and reserve from the press," Porter observes-rather plausibly, it would seem. Porter adds that the documents made available by the U. S. mission in 1971 "contradicted Pike on every major point. " According to former CIA analyst Frank Snepp, "The whole idea of a bloodbath was conjured out of thin air," and the stories were planted in the press by American officials "to generate sympathy for the South Vietnamese abroad"-in short, the "careful psychological warfare program pinning the blame on the communists" urged by "seasoned observers," as John Lengel of AP reported from Hue. 2
Presenting no evidence or argument, Braestrup accepts Pike's analysis and the U. S. government position as correct. In a footnote, he remarks that "Pike's account was challenged by D. Gareth Porter, a Cornell University graduate student, admirer of the National Liberation Front, and, briefly, a Saigon resident," but dismisses this as part of "a minor point of political contention" (I, 285-86). He describes Pike, in contrast, as "the independent-minded USIA specialist on the Vietcong" (I, 196),3 and makes no reference to the detailed analysis of Pike's allegations that had been presented by Porter, one of the few American scholars concerned with Vietnam. Similarly, Leonard Sussman takes it as obvious, without argument, that the government position must be correct, and that "the war's largest systematic execution of civilians" is the responsi- bility of the Viet Cong-thus excluding the systematic slaughter of thousands of civilians in Hue by U. S. firepower, possibly including many of those at- tributed to the Viet Cong massacre. 4 Also unmentioned here is the curious timing of the exposures that have since become the standard version of the Hue massacre, a few days after the belated exposure of the My Lai massacre in late November 1969, when
Army officers in Saigon made available "newly found" captured Viet Cong documents showing that Communist troops killed nearly 2,900 Vietnamese during the Hue offensive in February, 1968. Officers said the documents went unnoticed in U. S. military files for nineteen months until a correspondent's questions about Hue brought them to light. "I know it sounds incredible, but that's the truth," one official said. 5
We will not attempt to explore in this review what is not so much as attempted in the Freedom House study, but merely note, once again, that we have here not a work of scholarship but rather a government propaganda tract.
Max Frankel commented in the New York Times (Feb. II, 1968) that pres- sures at home and in Vietnam "are thought to have raised once again the temptation of further military escalation" (I, 584, italicized by Braestrup for emphasis as an example of raising "straw men"). Frankel was quite accurate in this measured statement. As Braestrup points out, "Wheeler and Westmore- land agreed that it was also a good time to urge a bolder Vietnam strategy, with more troops to gain quicker results: i. e. , forays into Laos, Cambodia, and possibly that part of North Vietnam just above the DMZ. " Why then the "straw man" charge? Because, Braestrup objects, escalation "was hardly a tempting prospect for Johnson" (his emphasis), hardly Frankel's point. Brae- strup claims further that Frankel, in this article, suggested "that escalation- notably a reserve call-up--was probable" (I, 586). Frankel's article does not appear in the accompanying volume of documents; turning to it, we discover that Braestrup's claim is another Freedom House exclusive, suggested no- where in Frankel's article, which is noteworthy only for its standard reiteration of government propaganda about the goal of bringing "security" to "the people of South Vietnam"-by B-52 bombing of villages, the exploits of Task Force Barker at and around My Lai at just that time as part of the general ravaging of Quang Ngai Province, etc.
After television, Newsweek is the worst offender. Let us therefore inquire further into its misdeeds. In what Braestrup describes as "Newsweek's major statement on the Thieu-Ky regime," a March 18 feature entitled "Vietnam: A Reappraisal," the journal commented accurately in an editorial entitled "The Political Morass" that "land reform, a vital element in any effort to win the loyalty of the peasantry, has not been tackled seriously" (I, 534-36), a truism familiar to everyone from the American high command to officials in Washing- ton. Braestrup comments: "It is difficult, once again, to fathom Newsweek's logic. Surely, neither Newsweek nor the Vietnamese peasant expected the regime to tackle land reform seriously in the aftermath of Tet. " It is perfectly obvious that in this "reappraisal," Newsweek is referring to the general picture, not specifically to the post-Tet period of one month.
According to Braestrup, "Newsweek, throughout the February-March 1968 period, was to refer, in passing, to the 'wily' Giap, 'tough' North Vietnamese regulars, 'ominous' enemy activity, and in general, to a foe without setbacks or flaws" (I, 229). Turning to the facts, on March II, Newsweek presented an analysis in which it reported that the Communists "were still plagued by the confusion that is characteristic of all military operations. " The report (II, 216f. ) goes on to describe "inexplicable" failure to blow up a crucial bridge, failure to use main forces adequately to maintain momentum, misassessment of popu-
lar moods and U. S. -ARVN tactics, inadequate preparation of troops etc I d' h "h ' . ,
"depressed"-as were pacification officials on the ground. The third example is from an NBC-TV "special," in which Dean Brelis says that we don't know what is happening in the rural areas but "can only imagine," and that "the cities are no longer secure; perhaps they never were. "s Hardly remarkable, and far from the fevered conclusion drawn in Braestrup's paraphrase.
Examples of what Braestrup calls "straw man journalism" abound in his own presentation. Thus he faults the media for claiming that the pacification program had been destroyed, whereas his own conclusion is that "pacification, although hit hard, was not 'dead' . . . it was a mixed picture, but clearly neither a military nor a psychological 'disaster' " (I, 716). The media regularly reported that pacification was hit hard, not dead, as his own evidence clearly shows-in contrast to the Pentagon, which took a more pessimistic view, as we shall see directly. Braestrup's "straw man journalism" may impress careless readers skimming the text for dramatic conclusions, but it presents no evidence and amounts to no argument.
Braestrup refers sarcastically to "insights into Vietnamese psychology," as when Morley Safer, watching marines burning down huts in Cam Ne, con- cluded that a peasant whose home was destroyed would find it hard to believe "that we are on his side" (I, 43). How does Safer know? Perhaps the peasant enjoyed watching the flames. Not all such "psychoanalyzing" is derided, how- ever, as when General Westmoreland explains that "the people in the cities are largely indignant at the Vietcong for violating the sanctity ofthe Tet period and for their tactics which brought about damage to the cities" (II, 164), or when he expounds on the peasant "state of mind" (1,78). Note that Safer is not criticized for accepting the tacit assumption that the press is an agency of the invading army ("we are on his side").
Braestrup states that "the embassy fight became the whole Tet offensive on TV and in the newspapers during that offensive's second day" (his emphasis; I, 126); this illustration of the incompetence of the media is thoroughly refuted by his story index. He also claims that the media exaggerated VC success in the early confusion by claiming that the embassy had been entered-failing, however, to compare these accounts with the reports by military police that they were taking fire from inside the embassy, or the message log of the 716th MP Battalion, which reads: "General Westmoreland calls; orders first priority effort to recapture U. S. Embassy" (I, 92; our emphasis). It is intriguing to read Braestrup's outrage over quite accurate press reporting of what was said by Westmoreland, military police involved in the fight, and others, and in particu- lar over the fact that the press did not simply rely on Westmoreland's later account (his apparent belief that the embassy had been "captured" goes be- yond any reporter's error that Braestrup cites). A careful reading shows that media reports were surprisingly accurate, given the confusion of the moment, although one cannot fault Braestrup's profound conclusion that "first reports are always partly wrong," which will come as a startling insight to the working journalist.
Repeatedly, the study claims that the media were "vengeful" or bent on "retribution" in reacting skeptically to government claims. An alternative possibility is that this reaction reflected a newfound realism. Braestrup agrees, for example, that "Westmoreland was wrong in publicly underestimating (in November [1967]) the enemy" (I, 69), and cites many other false and mislead-
conc u mg. t at t,e co~munistsdid not achieve most of their objectives. " T? e foll~wmgweek s article on Khe Sanh reports a marine view that "Charlie m. lssed hiS golden opportunity" by bad tactics. Newsweek's picture of "a fo without setbacks or flaws" is another Freedom House exclusive. e
What of ~e other sins? As for the reference to the "wily" Giap, compare ! V. ewsweek wlth ~hatBr~estrupregards as the outstanding analysis by Douglas Pike, who describes Glap as a "master tactician," "one of the best tactical comman~ers of the 20th century," etc. (I, 196f. ). On the "toughness" of the North ~~etnameseand their "ominous" activity, see the regular reports ofthe U. S. mlhtary co~mand, and an extensive literature by Vietnam veterans.
Br~es~rup claims that "one searches in vain through most of the media descr1~tlOns o~ the fo~, even we~l into March 1968, for indications that the enemy s plannmg, tactics, executIOn, zeal, and weaponry were less than flaw- less"; "there ~erefew hints in Times analyses or battlefield reporting that the ~oe w,as anythmg but shrewd, tenacious, ascetic, infallible and menacing, and ~~ thiS c~se th,:. pap~r h~d plenty of company" (I, 186, 216). Apart from
flawless and mfalhblC7. further Freedom House exclusives, the adjectives can be taken,from the mdltary reports and seem unexceptionable. The claim that the medla. regar~edthe enemy as infallible is defended through pages 186 to 231, along with typical Freedom House self-refutation: example after exam- ple to the contrary is cited, in addition to those just mentioned. The media ~~po~e~ t~at the VC "un~oubtedly" alienated the population, as they caused
l~dlscr1mmateslaughter and"totallymisjudgedthemoodoftheSouth Vietnamese. " They may be suffering "a severe manpower problem" and "hurt- ing badly. "6 They "failed to achieve their main objectives. " Captured VC got lost in Saigon and were falsely told that they would be welcomed. (This a~pears under Braestrup's heading "Television: in praise of the VC. ") They did not "get-or heed" important information. And so on. All in all, hardly the picture of an "infallible" and "flawless" enemy.
No~e a,lso t~e ~r~edom House assumption that a free press, militantly guardmg ItS obJectiVity, should not only consider those who are resisting the u. S. attack as "the enemy," "the foe," etc. , but must also refrain from accu- rately descri~ing"the en~my"as tough, resolute, and courageous. To play its proper role In a free society by Freedom House standards, the media should never veer a moment from the kind of service to the state demanded and
secured. by force in totalitarian states, so it appears.
The Impact of the Freedom House study comes from the impression of
massive doc~mentation and the huge resources that were employed to obtain and analyze It. Case by case, the examples collapse on inspection. Here are a few more examples, far from exhaustive. 7
. On pa~ificati? n,"TV and radio commentators went far beyond the available lOfor~atlOn to Imply the dramatic worst. " Three examples are cited to prove t~ePOlOt (I, 565). Howard Tuckner, ofNBC-TV, reported from New York the views of "U. S.
intelligence officials" and "Some U. S. officials in Vietnam"- correctly~as Braestrup concedes in a footnote, adding that these were the views of "CIA 10 Washington" and "Disheartened junior CORDS officials in Viet-
nam. " By Freedom House standards, it is improper to cite such sources accu- rately. The second example is a CBS radio report criticized only for being
328 APPENDIX 3
APPENDIX 3 329
ing optimistic statements, among them Robert Komer's prediction of "steady progress in pacification" a week before the Tet offensive (I, 72; Braestrup's paraphrase). In fact, part of the shock of the Tet offensive resulted from the faith ofthe media in previous government assessments, undermined by the Tet offensive, as the U. S. military and official Washington were well aware.
Furthermore, General Westmoreland's accounts were hardly persuasive during the offensive. Thus he claimed that "all I I of the Vietnamese division commanders . . . commanded their units effectively," whereas, as a journalist learned, one "had gone into a state of shock during the T et attacks" (I, 454-55). Or consider Westmoreland's claim that allegations about inaccuracy and in- flation of body counts were "one of the great distortions of the war" by the media-there were at most "relatively small inaccuracies" (II, 163). His own generals had a rather different view. In his study of the opinions of the generals, General Douglas Kinnard reports that 61 percent of those responding describe the body count as "often inflated," and only 26 percent "within reason accurate. " The responses include: "a fake-totally worthless," "often blatant lies," "a blot on the honor of the Army," and "grossly exaggerated by many
units primarily because of the incredible interest shown by people like McNamara and Westmoreland. " Perhaps journalists had some reason for skepticism, apart from "vengefulness. "9
To demonstrate the absurd extent of press efforts to find shock value, Braestrup cites a story in Time on enemy tunneling at Khe 8anh, "as occurred around Dienbienphu" (1,435; his emphasis), in general ridiculing the analogy- but forgetting to ridicule the remark by Marine Commander General Cush- man, who said that "He is digging trenches and doing other tricks of the trade which he learned to do at Dienbienphu" (I, 40 3).
"All Vietnam, it appeared on film at home, was in flames or being battered into ruins, and all Vietnamese civilians were homeless refugees," Br~estrup alleges (I, 234), in typically fanciful rhetoric, adding that "there were Virtually no films shown or photographs published during this period of undamaged portions of Saigon, Hue, or other cities" (his emphasis). This shows that coverage was unbalanced, supportive of the enemy. One wonders how many films and photographs of peaceful English villages or Hawaiian towns ap-
peared on the days that Coventry and Pearl Harbor were bombed, to balance
the picture.
Braestrup seeks the causes for the "exoneration of the Vietcong" for "killing
noncombatants or causing the exodus of refugees" (I, 234), overlooking ,the fact chat before seeking the cause of x it is necessary to show that x is true. In this case, it is not. The accounts he cites regularly blame the Viet Congfor
civilian suffering and emphasize Viet Cong atrocities. In fac~,he hi~s~lf
out that "both Time and Newsweek put the onus on the VIetcong 10 SaIgon (I, 246)-as elsewhere. Newsweek titled an article "The VC's Week ofTerror" (Feb. 12) and described VC terror squads executing civilians in Saigon (I, 490 ). Typically, the media blamed the Viet Cong for having "br. oug~t~ull~ts. an~ bombs into the very midst of heavily populated areas, causmg mdIscnmlOat slaughter of civilians caught in the cross fire and making homeless twice o~er the refugees who had fled to the cities for safety . . . " (Time, [1,246]), adopting the position of U. S. government propaganda that the enemy is to blame if the United States kills and destroys, and failing to add that the refugees had fled
to the cities for safety from massive U. S. violence and that such refugee generation was explicit policy. IO In the New York Times, Charles Mohr wrote that "In one sense the Vietcong have been responsible for civilian deaths by launching the urban attacks," citing American officials who are "sure that the population will be bitter about the guerrillas because of their 'callous disregard for human life' " (I, 243). Meanwhile, AP, the Washington Post, NBC, and others reported Viet Cong causing destruction, using civilians as shields, pre- venting civilians from fleeing attack, murdering civilians, etc. , often on the basis of flimsy evidence that would elicit much Freedom House derision if used to support accounts of American atrocities. In a typical misrepresentation, Braestrup claims that NBC-TV "attributed Saigon's losses solely to an allied military decision to 'kill or maim some of the people' to protect the rest" (our emphasis), citing Howard Tuckner's statement that there was a decision "that in order to protect most of the . . . people, they had to kill or maim some of the people"-a statement that is quite different from the paraphrase and is noteworthy only for its standard reference to "protecting" the victims (I, 249).
In general, far from "exonerating the Vietcong," the media bent over back- wards to blame them for the casualties and destruction caused by the U. S. forces who were "protecting" and "defending" South Vietnam and its popula- tion, according to unquestioned dogma. While the reporting was generally accurate in a narrow sense, the framework and the general picture presented are outlandish, and conform closely to the demands of the state propaganda system. It is, once again, highly revealing that Freedom House regards such service to the state as unremarkable-indeed, insufficient, by its standards.
The more general summaries in the Freedom House study leave the evi- dence presented far behind. Thus the ruins and destruction "were presented as symbolic evidence of a stunning 'defeat' (variously implied or defined) for allied forces" (I, 621). "The Americans, by their heavy use of firepower in a few cities, were implicitly depicted as callously destroying all Vietnam . . . , while the Vietcong's indiscriminate use of their own firepower, as well as the Hue killings, were largely overlooked" (I, 286). The dominant themes in the media "added up to a portrait of defeat for the allies" (I, 705). "At Tet, the press shouted that the patient was dying" (I, 714). And so on.
We have already cited enough to show how much merit there is in these characterizations. Furthermore, as already indicated, the media reports gener- ally conformed to those of the U. S. military, although they were often less extreme in suggesting enemy success, as we have seen. Braestrup is not un- aware of this. He writes, for example, that "MACV spokesmen in Saigon themselves contributed in February to a general journalistic perception that no logistics, organizational, or manpower limitations inhibited the NVA's ca- pacity, even after the 'first wave,' to strike anywhere at will ('No place was safe any more')" (I, 190). Furthermore, "most eyewitness combat reporting, rare and restricted as it was, showed up better in February than the MACV com- muniques or the communique rewrites in Saigon" (I, 334). In fact, the military briefings cited are closely similar to media commentary in basic content, e. g. , Brigadier General John Chaisson, February 3, who described "a real battle," "a very successful offensive in its initial phases," "surprisingly well coor- dinated," "surprisingly intensive," conducted with "a surprising amount of audacity"-for example, in Hue, where "the VC had the town," etc. Naturally
p~Ints
330 APPENDIX 3
the media varied more widely in content and style, but characterizations of the sort cited above must simply be dismissed as hysteria, even apart from the numerous misrepresentations and sheer fabrications.
If this is one of the great achievements of contemporary scholarship, as John Roche claims, then scholarship is in a bad way indeed.
Notes
Preface
I. We use the term "special interests" in its commonsense meaning, not in the Orwellian usage of the Reagan era, where it designates workers, farmers, women, youth, blacks, the aged and infirm, the unemployed-in short, the population at large. Only one group did not merit this appellation: corpora- tions, and their owners and managers. They are not "special interests," they represent the "national interest. " This terminology represents the reality of domination and the operational usage of "national interest" for the two major political parties. For a similar view, with evidence of the relevance of this usage to both major political parties, see Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, Right Turn: The Decline of the Democrats and the Future of American Politics (New York: Hill and Wang, 1986), pp. 37-39 and passim.
2. Herbert Gans, for example, states that "The beliefs that actually make it into the news are professional values that are intrinsic to national journalism and that journalists learn on the job. . . . The rules of news judgment call for ignoring story implications . . . " ("Are U. S. Journalists Dangerously Liberal? " Columbia Journalism Review [Nov. -Dec. 1985], pp. 32-33). In his book Decid- ing What's News (New York: Vintage, 1980), Gans contends that media report-
- nU&. :) AI-All
ers are by and large "objective," but within a framework of beliefs in a set of "enduring values" that include "ethnocentrism" and "responsible capitalism," among others. We would submit that if reporters for Pravda were found to operate within the constraints of belief in the essential justice of the Soviet state and "responsible communism," this would be found to make any further discussion of "objectivity" pointless. Furthermore, as we shall document below, Gans greatly understates the extent to which media reporters work within a limiting framework of assumptions.
3. Neoconservative critiques of the mass media commonly portray them as bastions of liberal, antiestablishment attacks on the system. They ignore the fact that the mass media are large business corporations controlled by very wealthy individuals or other corporations, and that the members of what the neoconservatives describe as the "liberal culture" of the media are hired employees. They also disregard the fact that the members of this liberal culture generally accept the basic premises of the system and differ with other mem- bers of the establishment largely on the tactics appropriate to achieving com- mon ends. The neoconservatives are simply not prepared to allow deviations from their own views. In our analysis in chapter I, we describe them as playing the important role of "enforcers," attempting to browbeat the media into excluding from a hearing even the limited dissent now tolerated. For an analysis of the neoconservative view of the media, see Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead, "Ledeen on the Media," in The Rise and Fall ofthe Bulgarian Connection (New York: Sheridan Square Publications, 1986), pp. 166-70; George Gerbner, "Television: The Mainstreaming of America," in Business and the Media, Conference Report, Yankelovich, Skelly and White, November
19,1981; Gans, "Are U. S. Journalists Dangerously Liberal? "
4. See Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (1921; reprint, London: Allen & Unwin, 1932); Harold Lasswell, "Propaganda," in Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1933); Edward Bernays, Propaganda (New York: H. Liveright, 1928); M. J. Crozier, S. P. Huntington, and J. Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governabi/ity of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission (New York: New York University Press, 1975). For further discussion, see Noam Chomsky, T()'{I)ards a New Cold War (New York: Pantheon, 1982), chapter I. and references cited, particularly, Alex Carey, "Reshaping the Truth: Pragmatists and Propagandists in America," Meanjin Quarterly (Australia), vol. 35, no. 4 (1976).
5. Public Opinion, p. 248. Lippmann did not find this objectionable, as "the common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialized class whose personal interests reach beyond the locality" (p. 310). He was distressed that the incorrigible bias of the press might mislead the "specialized class" as well as the public. The problem, therefore, was how to get adequate information to the decision-making elites (pp. 31-32).
This, he believed, might be accomplished by development of a body of inde- pendent experts who could give the leadership unbiased advice. Lippmann raised no question about possible personal or class interests of the "specialized class" or the "experts" on whom they might choose to rely, on their ability, or their right, to articulate "the common interest. "
6. For example, Claire Sterling and the experts of the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies-Walter Laqueur, Michael Ledeen, and
NOTES TO PAGES xii-xiii 333
;:3;:3- ~. . "" . . . . . . . . . , . . v . . .
Robert Kupperman-have been established as the authorities on terrorism by the mass media; on the Sterling and Paul Henze role in working up the Bulgarian Connection in the plot against the pope, see chapter 4. In the case of Latin America, the media have been compelled to avoid the usual resort to the academic profession for expression of approved opinion, as the profession largely rejects the framework of state propaganda in this instance. It has therefore been necessary to create a new cadre of "experts" (Robert Leiken, Ronald Radosh, Mark Falcoff, Susan Kaufman Purcell, etc. ) to whom they can turn to satisfy doctrinal needs. See Noam Chomsl(y~The Culture of Terrorism (Boston: South End Press, 1988), for examples. On the process ,of creating experts to meet system demands, see our chapter 1 under "Sourcing Mass- Media News. "
7. Like other terms of political discourse, the word "democracy" has a techni- cal Orwellian sense when used in rhetorical flights, or in regular "news report- ing," to refer to U. S. efforts to establish "democracy. " The term refers to systems in which control over resourFes and the means of violence ensures the rule of elements that will serve the needs of U. S. power. Thus the terror states of El Salvador and Guatemala are "democratic," as is Honduras under the rule of the military and oligarchy, and the collection of wealthy businessmen, bankers, etc. , organized by the United States as a front for the Somocista-Ied mercenary army created by the Unite4 States is entitled "the democratic resistance. " See further, chapter 3.
8. In the eighty-five opinion columns on Nicaragua that appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post in the first three months of 1986, during the "national debate" preceding the congressional votes on contra aid, not a single one mentioned this elementary fact. For a detailed review, see Noam Chomsky, "Introduction," in Morris Morley and James Petras, The Reagan
Administration and Nicaragua, Monograph I (New York: Institute for Media Analysis, 1987).
9. Only two phrases in the eighty-five opinion columns cited in the previous footnote mentioned that the Nicaraguan government had carried out reforms; none of them compared Nicaragua with EI Salvador and Guatemala on this important question.
10. See Dianna Melrose, Nicaragua: The Threat ofa Good Example? (Oxford: Oxfam, 1985); see also chapters 3, 5, and 7, below.
II. In an article highly critical of the Reagan "peace plan" for Nicaragua in August 1987, Tom Wicker says, "Whatever his doctrine, the United States has no historic or God-given right to bring democracy to other nations; nor does such a purpose justify the overthrow of governments it does not like" ("That Dog Won't Hunt," New York Times, Aug. 6, I987). Wicker does not contest the claim that Reagan seeks democracy in Nicaragua; it is just that his means are dubious and his plan won't work. We should note that Wicker is at the outer limits of expressible dissident opinion in the U. S. mass media. See further, chapter 3. For additional references and discussion, see Chomsky, Culture of Terrorism.
12. For example, in response to the Guatemala peace accords of August 1987, the United States immediately escalated the supply flights required to keep its forces in Nicaragua in the field to the phenomenal level of two to three per day. The purpose was to undermine the accords by intensifying the fighting,
334 NOTES TO P AGES xiii-3
NOTES TO P AGES 4-5 335
and to prevent Nicaragua from relaxing its guard so that it could be accused of failing to comply with the accords. These U. S. initiatives were by far the most serious violations of the accords, but they were virtually unmentioned in the media. For a detailed review, see Noam Chomsky, "Is Peace at Hand? " Z magazine (January 1988).
13. Jacques Ellul, Propaganda (New York: Knopf, 1965), pp. 58-59.
14. A careful reader of the Soviet press could learn facts about the war in Af- ghanistan that controvert the government line-see chapter 5, pp. 226-27-but these inconvenient facts would not be considered in the West to demonstrate the objectivity ofthe Soviet press and the adequacy ofits coverage ofthis issue.
Chapter 1: A Propaganda Model
I. See note 4 of the preface.
2. Media representatives claim that what the government says is "news- worthy" in its own right. If, however, the government's assertions are transmit- ted without context or evaluation, and without regard to the government's possible manipulative intent, the media have set themselves up to be "managed. " Their objectivity is "nominal," not substantive.
In early October 1986, memos were leaked to the press indicating that the Reagan administration had carried out a deliberate campaign ofdisinformation to influence events in Libya.
? (A)
the witness gca was In regular contact with outside sources of informaf
ere
"Even the Attorneys for the Bulgarians . . . . "
In assessing how Agca knew so much, Tagliabue allocates only one paragraph to the possibility that Agca was coached. On the other hand, he goes to great pains to stress that Agca knew an awful lot-telephone numbers, personal habits, nicknames. Tagliabue gives as the "simplest explanation" of Agca's knowledge that he had access to books, newspapers, magazines, and other materials from the outside. Interestingly, he fails to mention the numerous prison contacts between Agca and secret service, Mafia, and Vatican agents and emissaries. Agca even wrote a letter to the Vatican complaining of the pressure from its representative in prison (also linked to the Mafia), a fact long blacked out by the Times. These visits would point to the ease with which Agca could have been fed information while in prison. Tagliabue will not admit facts that get into this dangerous territory.
A major question is how Agca knew details about Antonov's apartment when he later admitted to Martella that he had never been there. The Bulgarians and Antonov's defense went to great pains to prove that the information Agca provided about Antonov's apartment had never been divulged in the media before Agca enumerated the details. This implied coaching, as did a mistake in identification where Agca described a characteristic of Antonov's apartment that fitted other apartments in the building, but not Antonov's. Tagliabue says that "Even the attorneys for the Bulgarians acknowledge" that Agca named things not available through reading the papers, as if they were conceding a point, not making a devastating case for coaching. Newspaper work couldn't be more dishonest than this.
"The More Sinister View"
In a single, late paragraph devoted to the possibility of coaching, Tagliabue merely asserts it as a claim, without providing a single supportive point of evidence, although there are many. 6 He uses a double propagandist's put- down-ironically designating the coaching hypothesis as "the more sinister view," and stating that it is "espoused by critics of the case on the political left, including Soviet bloc governments. " Even Tagliabue, in his earlier news
I
I
Appendix 3
BRAESTRUP'S BIG STORY: Some "Freedom House Exclusives"
In "The Tet offensive" (p. 211), we considered the example that has regularly been put forth to substantiate the charge that the media adopt an "adversarial stance" with regard to established power-eoverage ofthe Tet offensive-and the Freedom House study on which this charge is based. As we saw, in this case too the behavior of the media conforms to the expectations of the propa- ganda model, and the major theses advanced in the Freedom House study are refuted even by their own evidence. What remains of their charge is the possibility that media coverage of the Tet offensive was technically incompe- tent, although subordinated to elite requirements. Turning to a closer exami- nation ofthis charge, we find that the shoe is on the other foot: when "Freedom House exclusives" are corrected, the performance of the media appears quite creditable, while the incompetence of the Freedom House study is seen to transcend even the level already demonstrated. That this study has been taken seriously, and permitted to set much of the agenda for subsequent discussion, is a most intriguing fact.
According to Freedom House, television commentary and Newsweek are the
worst offenders in this "extreme case" of journalistic incompetence, so let us begin by reviewing some of their sins. One example to which Braestrup reverts several times is Walter Cronkite's "much publicized half-hour CBS 'special' on the war" on February 27 (Big Seory, I, 158). According to Braestrup Cronkite's "assessment" here is "that U. S. troops would have to garrison th~ countryside" (I, 645). In his foreword, Leonard Sussman properly observes that "We do not expect the reader to accept on faith our various analyses or judgments," and so "the complete texts of many of the reports discussed" are presented, primarily in volume II (I, x). Following his advice, we turn to volume II, where we find the complete text of Cronkite's "special" (180ff. ). There is not even a remote hint of the "assessment" that Braestrup attributes to him.
In this important "special," Braestrup claims, "In effect, Cronkite seemed to say, the ruins, the refugees, the disruption of pacification that came at Tet added up to a defeat for the allies that would force President Johnson to the negotiating table" (I, 158). Cronkite says nothing of the kind. He reports that "there are doubts about the measure of success or setback," noting accurately that "the experts do not agree on the objectives or on the amount of success the communists had in achieving them. " They "failed" in many of their aims, but in a third phase the enemy might "recoup there what he lost in the first two phases. " In what he calls a "speculative, personal, subjective" judgment, Cronkite states that he is "not sure . . . who won and who lost," or to what extent. He concludes that the United States is probably "mired in stalemate," and that historians may conclude that the Tet battle was "a draw"; "To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. " He does not say that Johnson will be "forced" to the negotiating table by a "defeat," but rather that if indeed there is a "stalemate," then "the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could. " Note the typical reiteration of government propaganda concerning American
aims, unsullied by the factual record-enormous in scale, by this time-of U. S. government efforts to undermine democracy and to destroy all popular forces-the NLF, the Buddhist "third force," etc. -in South Vietnam, on the assumption, openly admitted, that the forces placed in power by U. S. violence could not survive political competition. Recall also that in these comments that Freedom House derides, Cronkite reaches essentially the same conclusion as did the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Wheeler, in his summary to the president on the same day as Cronkite's broadcast, and the president's advisers a month later.
We may note also that two weeks earlier, Cronkite had "assessed" the impact of the Communist offensive, on the basis of U. S. and Vietnamese sources, reporting that "first, and simplest, the Vietcong suffered a military defeat" (I, 158). Similarly, on an NBC-TV special of March 10 that Braestrup repeatedly condemns, Howard Tuckner stated that "Militarily the allies won" (I, 159), as did others repeatedly.
Cronkite's "special" is exhibit A in the Freedom House indictment. The example is typical of the relation between their conclusions and the evidence they cite.
Braestrup refers to a television comment by Robert Schakne on February 28 for which he gives the following paraphrase: "In short, the United States would now have to take over the whole war, including the permanently dam- aged pacification program, because of Saigon's failures" (I, 562-63). Braestrup claims further that Schackne attributed "this argument" to Robert Komer. This he calls "a CBS exclusive," his standard term of derision. In fact, "this argument" is yet another "Freedom House exclusive. " What Schackne said, according to Braestrup, is that it was "likely" that Komer was in Washington with General Wheeler to ask for more troops "to help get the Vietnam pacifi- cation program back on the road. " The preceding day, Wheeler had requested that the troop level be raised from 525,000 to 731,756, one primary concern being that "There is no doubt that the RD Program [pacification] has suffered a severe set back," that "To a large extent the VC now control the country- side," and that "US forces will be required in a number of places to assist and encourage the Vietnamese Army to leave the cities and towns and reenter the country. "l While Braestrup's version of Schackne's "argument" has little re- semblance to the actual words he attributes to Schackne, these words were, if anything, understated.
Braestrup then goes on to claim that Cronkite "used the same argument almost verbatim, but with an even stronger conclusion" in a February 28 radio broadcast. There is no hint in the actual broadcast of Braestrup's "argument. " The closest Cronkite came to this "argument" is his statement that ''presuma- bly, A mbassador Komer told a sad tale to President Johnson" (Braestrup's empha- sis). Cronkite then repeated accurately the basic facts presented by Komer in a briefing four days earlier. He concluded that "it seems likely that today Ambassador Komer asked President Johnson for more American troops so that we can permanently occupy the hamlets and fulfill the promise of security [sic] to their residents, a promise the Vietnamese alone apparently cannot honor," the NLF not being Vietnamese, as usual. Apart from the tacit assumption of the propaganda system that the villagers yearn for the fulfillment of this "promise of security" from the NLF, Cronkite's speculation that U. S. troops would have to fulfill a promise that ARVN alone apparently could not honor hardly seems unreasonable, three days after General Westmoreland had stated that "additional U. S. forces would probably be required" (11,159), and that
with them "we could more effectively deny the enemy his objectives"; four days after Komer had described the Tet offensive as a "considerable setback" to pacification; a day after Cronkite had presented a television interview with Captain Donald Jones, deputy pacification adviser for the district regarded as "the bowl of pacification," who said that "for most of the District, pacification does not exist," and travel there is impossible (CBS-TV "special" of February 27, cited above); and one day after General Wheeler had asked for a huge troop increase justified in part by the need to overcome the fact that "To a large extent the VC now control the countryside. "
Television and radio are not alone in being subjected to "Freedom House exclusives. " Here are a few examples.
Exuding contempt and derision, the study informs us that "no one" except for George McArthur (AP) and Don Oberdorfer (Knight) "reported . . . on what happened to Hue's civilians under Vietcong rule" (I, 299). Again demon-
strating his considerable gift for self-refutation, Braestrup cites reports on Vietcong executions, kidnappings, burial of executed civilians in mass graves, etc. , in Hue under Viet Cong rule by Newsweek, UPI, Washington Post, William Ryan, Reuters, New York Times, Time, London Times, and the NBC "Today" show (I, 277, 281-84, 472). On page 283, Braestrup writes that "The television networks, as far as our records show, made no mention of the executions at all"; on page 472, he refutes this claim, noting that on February 28, in an "aftermath film report from Hue . . . at battle's end," the NBC "Today" show "hinted at the Hue massacre with this statement: 'Hundreds of government workers were killed and thrown into temporary graves. ''' A rather broad "hint," it would seem. The example is typical of the Freedom House style of handling evidence.
In this connection, we should observe that the numerous stories on the Hue massacre cited by Braestrup in self-refutation referred to the official allega- tions that 300 to 400 government officials were killed in Hue, a considerable massacre but "only one-tenth of the civilian toll in the fighting," so that "it did not seem like a major story," Gareth Porter comments; he adds that "What made the 'Hue massacre' a major story was the publicizing by U. S. embassy propagandist Douglas Pike, who wrote a pamphlet on the subject in late 1969 at the request of the American ambassador to Saigon, Ellsworth Bunker. " Pike's account was given wide coverage when it appeared and has become the basis for the standard versions since, despite the dubious source: "given the fact that Pike was relying on the Saigon political warfare department for most of his data, which was otherwise unverified, one might have asked for more skepticism and reserve from the press," Porter observes-rather plausibly, it would seem. Porter adds that the documents made available by the U. S. mission in 1971 "contradicted Pike on every major point. " According to former CIA analyst Frank Snepp, "The whole idea of a bloodbath was conjured out of thin air," and the stories were planted in the press by American officials "to generate sympathy for the South Vietnamese abroad"-in short, the "careful psychological warfare program pinning the blame on the communists" urged by "seasoned observers," as John Lengel of AP reported from Hue. 2
Presenting no evidence or argument, Braestrup accepts Pike's analysis and the U. S. government position as correct. In a footnote, he remarks that "Pike's account was challenged by D. Gareth Porter, a Cornell University graduate student, admirer of the National Liberation Front, and, briefly, a Saigon resident," but dismisses this as part of "a minor point of political contention" (I, 285-86). He describes Pike, in contrast, as "the independent-minded USIA specialist on the Vietcong" (I, 196),3 and makes no reference to the detailed analysis of Pike's allegations that had been presented by Porter, one of the few American scholars concerned with Vietnam. Similarly, Leonard Sussman takes it as obvious, without argument, that the government position must be correct, and that "the war's largest systematic execution of civilians" is the responsi- bility of the Viet Cong-thus excluding the systematic slaughter of thousands of civilians in Hue by U. S. firepower, possibly including many of those at- tributed to the Viet Cong massacre. 4 Also unmentioned here is the curious timing of the exposures that have since become the standard version of the Hue massacre, a few days after the belated exposure of the My Lai massacre in late November 1969, when
Army officers in Saigon made available "newly found" captured Viet Cong documents showing that Communist troops killed nearly 2,900 Vietnamese during the Hue offensive in February, 1968. Officers said the documents went unnoticed in U. S. military files for nineteen months until a correspondent's questions about Hue brought them to light. "I know it sounds incredible, but that's the truth," one official said. 5
We will not attempt to explore in this review what is not so much as attempted in the Freedom House study, but merely note, once again, that we have here not a work of scholarship but rather a government propaganda tract.
Max Frankel commented in the New York Times (Feb. II, 1968) that pres- sures at home and in Vietnam "are thought to have raised once again the temptation of further military escalation" (I, 584, italicized by Braestrup for emphasis as an example of raising "straw men"). Frankel was quite accurate in this measured statement. As Braestrup points out, "Wheeler and Westmore- land agreed that it was also a good time to urge a bolder Vietnam strategy, with more troops to gain quicker results: i. e. , forays into Laos, Cambodia, and possibly that part of North Vietnam just above the DMZ. " Why then the "straw man" charge? Because, Braestrup objects, escalation "was hardly a tempting prospect for Johnson" (his emphasis), hardly Frankel's point. Brae- strup claims further that Frankel, in this article, suggested "that escalation- notably a reserve call-up--was probable" (I, 586). Frankel's article does not appear in the accompanying volume of documents; turning to it, we discover that Braestrup's claim is another Freedom House exclusive, suggested no- where in Frankel's article, which is noteworthy only for its standard reiteration of government propaganda about the goal of bringing "security" to "the people of South Vietnam"-by B-52 bombing of villages, the exploits of Task Force Barker at and around My Lai at just that time as part of the general ravaging of Quang Ngai Province, etc.
After television, Newsweek is the worst offender. Let us therefore inquire further into its misdeeds. In what Braestrup describes as "Newsweek's major statement on the Thieu-Ky regime," a March 18 feature entitled "Vietnam: A Reappraisal," the journal commented accurately in an editorial entitled "The Political Morass" that "land reform, a vital element in any effort to win the loyalty of the peasantry, has not been tackled seriously" (I, 534-36), a truism familiar to everyone from the American high command to officials in Washing- ton. Braestrup comments: "It is difficult, once again, to fathom Newsweek's logic. Surely, neither Newsweek nor the Vietnamese peasant expected the regime to tackle land reform seriously in the aftermath of Tet. " It is perfectly obvious that in this "reappraisal," Newsweek is referring to the general picture, not specifically to the post-Tet period of one month.
According to Braestrup, "Newsweek, throughout the February-March 1968 period, was to refer, in passing, to the 'wily' Giap, 'tough' North Vietnamese regulars, 'ominous' enemy activity, and in general, to a foe without setbacks or flaws" (I, 229). Turning to the facts, on March II, Newsweek presented an analysis in which it reported that the Communists "were still plagued by the confusion that is characteristic of all military operations. " The report (II, 216f. ) goes on to describe "inexplicable" failure to blow up a crucial bridge, failure to use main forces adequately to maintain momentum, misassessment of popu-
lar moods and U. S. -ARVN tactics, inadequate preparation of troops etc I d' h "h ' . ,
"depressed"-as were pacification officials on the ground. The third example is from an NBC-TV "special," in which Dean Brelis says that we don't know what is happening in the rural areas but "can only imagine," and that "the cities are no longer secure; perhaps they never were. "s Hardly remarkable, and far from the fevered conclusion drawn in Braestrup's paraphrase.
Examples of what Braestrup calls "straw man journalism" abound in his own presentation. Thus he faults the media for claiming that the pacification program had been destroyed, whereas his own conclusion is that "pacification, although hit hard, was not 'dead' . . . it was a mixed picture, but clearly neither a military nor a psychological 'disaster' " (I, 716). The media regularly reported that pacification was hit hard, not dead, as his own evidence clearly shows-in contrast to the Pentagon, which took a more pessimistic view, as we shall see directly. Braestrup's "straw man journalism" may impress careless readers skimming the text for dramatic conclusions, but it presents no evidence and amounts to no argument.
Braestrup refers sarcastically to "insights into Vietnamese psychology," as when Morley Safer, watching marines burning down huts in Cam Ne, con- cluded that a peasant whose home was destroyed would find it hard to believe "that we are on his side" (I, 43). How does Safer know? Perhaps the peasant enjoyed watching the flames. Not all such "psychoanalyzing" is derided, how- ever, as when General Westmoreland explains that "the people in the cities are largely indignant at the Vietcong for violating the sanctity ofthe Tet period and for their tactics which brought about damage to the cities" (II, 164), or when he expounds on the peasant "state of mind" (1,78). Note that Safer is not criticized for accepting the tacit assumption that the press is an agency of the invading army ("we are on his side").
Braestrup states that "the embassy fight became the whole Tet offensive on TV and in the newspapers during that offensive's second day" (his emphasis; I, 126); this illustration of the incompetence of the media is thoroughly refuted by his story index. He also claims that the media exaggerated VC success in the early confusion by claiming that the embassy had been entered-failing, however, to compare these accounts with the reports by military police that they were taking fire from inside the embassy, or the message log of the 716th MP Battalion, which reads: "General Westmoreland calls; orders first priority effort to recapture U. S. Embassy" (I, 92; our emphasis). It is intriguing to read Braestrup's outrage over quite accurate press reporting of what was said by Westmoreland, military police involved in the fight, and others, and in particu- lar over the fact that the press did not simply rely on Westmoreland's later account (his apparent belief that the embassy had been "captured" goes be- yond any reporter's error that Braestrup cites). A careful reading shows that media reports were surprisingly accurate, given the confusion of the moment, although one cannot fault Braestrup's profound conclusion that "first reports are always partly wrong," which will come as a startling insight to the working journalist.
Repeatedly, the study claims that the media were "vengeful" or bent on "retribution" in reacting skeptically to government claims. An alternative possibility is that this reaction reflected a newfound realism. Braestrup agrees, for example, that "Westmoreland was wrong in publicly underestimating (in November [1967]) the enemy" (I, 69), and cites many other false and mislead-
conc u mg. t at t,e co~munistsdid not achieve most of their objectives. " T? e foll~wmgweek s article on Khe Sanh reports a marine view that "Charlie m. lssed hiS golden opportunity" by bad tactics. Newsweek's picture of "a fo without setbacks or flaws" is another Freedom House exclusive. e
What of ~e other sins? As for the reference to the "wily" Giap, compare ! V. ewsweek wlth ~hatBr~estrupregards as the outstanding analysis by Douglas Pike, who describes Glap as a "master tactician," "one of the best tactical comman~ers of the 20th century," etc. (I, 196f. ). On the "toughness" of the North ~~etnameseand their "ominous" activity, see the regular reports ofthe U. S. mlhtary co~mand, and an extensive literature by Vietnam veterans.
Br~es~rup claims that "one searches in vain through most of the media descr1~tlOns o~ the fo~, even we~l into March 1968, for indications that the enemy s plannmg, tactics, executIOn, zeal, and weaponry were less than flaw- less"; "there ~erefew hints in Times analyses or battlefield reporting that the ~oe w,as anythmg but shrewd, tenacious, ascetic, infallible and menacing, and ~~ thiS c~se th,:. pap~r h~d plenty of company" (I, 186, 216). Apart from
flawless and mfalhblC7. further Freedom House exclusives, the adjectives can be taken,from the mdltary reports and seem unexceptionable. The claim that the medla. regar~edthe enemy as infallible is defended through pages 186 to 231, along with typical Freedom House self-refutation: example after exam- ple to the contrary is cited, in addition to those just mentioned. The media ~~po~e~ t~at the VC "un~oubtedly" alienated the population, as they caused
l~dlscr1mmateslaughter and"totallymisjudgedthemoodoftheSouth Vietnamese. " They may be suffering "a severe manpower problem" and "hurt- ing badly. "6 They "failed to achieve their main objectives. " Captured VC got lost in Saigon and were falsely told that they would be welcomed. (This a~pears under Braestrup's heading "Television: in praise of the VC. ") They did not "get-or heed" important information. And so on. All in all, hardly the picture of an "infallible" and "flawless" enemy.
No~e a,lso t~e ~r~edom House assumption that a free press, militantly guardmg ItS obJectiVity, should not only consider those who are resisting the u. S. attack as "the enemy," "the foe," etc. , but must also refrain from accu- rately descri~ing"the en~my"as tough, resolute, and courageous. To play its proper role In a free society by Freedom House standards, the media should never veer a moment from the kind of service to the state demanded and
secured. by force in totalitarian states, so it appears.
The Impact of the Freedom House study comes from the impression of
massive doc~mentation and the huge resources that were employed to obtain and analyze It. Case by case, the examples collapse on inspection. Here are a few more examples, far from exhaustive. 7
. On pa~ificati? n,"TV and radio commentators went far beyond the available lOfor~atlOn to Imply the dramatic worst. " Three examples are cited to prove t~ePOlOt (I, 565). Howard Tuckner, ofNBC-TV, reported from New York the views of "U. S.
intelligence officials" and "Some U. S. officials in Vietnam"- correctly~as Braestrup concedes in a footnote, adding that these were the views of "CIA 10 Washington" and "Disheartened junior CORDS officials in Viet-
nam. " By Freedom House standards, it is improper to cite such sources accu- rately. The second example is a CBS radio report criticized only for being
328 APPENDIX 3
APPENDIX 3 329
ing optimistic statements, among them Robert Komer's prediction of "steady progress in pacification" a week before the Tet offensive (I, 72; Braestrup's paraphrase). In fact, part of the shock of the Tet offensive resulted from the faith ofthe media in previous government assessments, undermined by the Tet offensive, as the U. S. military and official Washington were well aware.
Furthermore, General Westmoreland's accounts were hardly persuasive during the offensive. Thus he claimed that "all I I of the Vietnamese division commanders . . . commanded their units effectively," whereas, as a journalist learned, one "had gone into a state of shock during the T et attacks" (I, 454-55). Or consider Westmoreland's claim that allegations about inaccuracy and in- flation of body counts were "one of the great distortions of the war" by the media-there were at most "relatively small inaccuracies" (II, 163). His own generals had a rather different view. In his study of the opinions of the generals, General Douglas Kinnard reports that 61 percent of those responding describe the body count as "often inflated," and only 26 percent "within reason accurate. " The responses include: "a fake-totally worthless," "often blatant lies," "a blot on the honor of the Army," and "grossly exaggerated by many
units primarily because of the incredible interest shown by people like McNamara and Westmoreland. " Perhaps journalists had some reason for skepticism, apart from "vengefulness. "9
To demonstrate the absurd extent of press efforts to find shock value, Braestrup cites a story in Time on enemy tunneling at Khe 8anh, "as occurred around Dienbienphu" (1,435; his emphasis), in general ridiculing the analogy- but forgetting to ridicule the remark by Marine Commander General Cush- man, who said that "He is digging trenches and doing other tricks of the trade which he learned to do at Dienbienphu" (I, 40 3).
"All Vietnam, it appeared on film at home, was in flames or being battered into ruins, and all Vietnamese civilians were homeless refugees," Br~estrup alleges (I, 234), in typically fanciful rhetoric, adding that "there were Virtually no films shown or photographs published during this period of undamaged portions of Saigon, Hue, or other cities" (his emphasis). This shows that coverage was unbalanced, supportive of the enemy. One wonders how many films and photographs of peaceful English villages or Hawaiian towns ap-
peared on the days that Coventry and Pearl Harbor were bombed, to balance
the picture.
Braestrup seeks the causes for the "exoneration of the Vietcong" for "killing
noncombatants or causing the exodus of refugees" (I, 234), overlooking ,the fact chat before seeking the cause of x it is necessary to show that x is true. In this case, it is not. The accounts he cites regularly blame the Viet Congfor
civilian suffering and emphasize Viet Cong atrocities. In fac~,he hi~s~lf
out that "both Time and Newsweek put the onus on the VIetcong 10 SaIgon (I, 246)-as elsewhere. Newsweek titled an article "The VC's Week ofTerror" (Feb. 12) and described VC terror squads executing civilians in Saigon (I, 490 ). Typically, the media blamed the Viet Cong for having "br. oug~t~ull~ts. an~ bombs into the very midst of heavily populated areas, causmg mdIscnmlOat slaughter of civilians caught in the cross fire and making homeless twice o~er the refugees who had fled to the cities for safety . . . " (Time, [1,246]), adopting the position of U. S. government propaganda that the enemy is to blame if the United States kills and destroys, and failing to add that the refugees had fled
to the cities for safety from massive U. S. violence and that such refugee generation was explicit policy. IO In the New York Times, Charles Mohr wrote that "In one sense the Vietcong have been responsible for civilian deaths by launching the urban attacks," citing American officials who are "sure that the population will be bitter about the guerrillas because of their 'callous disregard for human life' " (I, 243). Meanwhile, AP, the Washington Post, NBC, and others reported Viet Cong causing destruction, using civilians as shields, pre- venting civilians from fleeing attack, murdering civilians, etc. , often on the basis of flimsy evidence that would elicit much Freedom House derision if used to support accounts of American atrocities. In a typical misrepresentation, Braestrup claims that NBC-TV "attributed Saigon's losses solely to an allied military decision to 'kill or maim some of the people' to protect the rest" (our emphasis), citing Howard Tuckner's statement that there was a decision "that in order to protect most of the . . . people, they had to kill or maim some of the people"-a statement that is quite different from the paraphrase and is noteworthy only for its standard reference to "protecting" the victims (I, 249).
In general, far from "exonerating the Vietcong," the media bent over back- wards to blame them for the casualties and destruction caused by the U. S. forces who were "protecting" and "defending" South Vietnam and its popula- tion, according to unquestioned dogma. While the reporting was generally accurate in a narrow sense, the framework and the general picture presented are outlandish, and conform closely to the demands of the state propaganda system. It is, once again, highly revealing that Freedom House regards such service to the state as unremarkable-indeed, insufficient, by its standards.
The more general summaries in the Freedom House study leave the evi- dence presented far behind. Thus the ruins and destruction "were presented as symbolic evidence of a stunning 'defeat' (variously implied or defined) for allied forces" (I, 621). "The Americans, by their heavy use of firepower in a few cities, were implicitly depicted as callously destroying all Vietnam . . . , while the Vietcong's indiscriminate use of their own firepower, as well as the Hue killings, were largely overlooked" (I, 286). The dominant themes in the media "added up to a portrait of defeat for the allies" (I, 705). "At Tet, the press shouted that the patient was dying" (I, 714). And so on.
We have already cited enough to show how much merit there is in these characterizations. Furthermore, as already indicated, the media reports gener- ally conformed to those of the U. S. military, although they were often less extreme in suggesting enemy success, as we have seen. Braestrup is not un- aware of this. He writes, for example, that "MACV spokesmen in Saigon themselves contributed in February to a general journalistic perception that no logistics, organizational, or manpower limitations inhibited the NVA's ca- pacity, even after the 'first wave,' to strike anywhere at will ('No place was safe any more')" (I, 190). Furthermore, "most eyewitness combat reporting, rare and restricted as it was, showed up better in February than the MACV com- muniques or the communique rewrites in Saigon" (I, 334). In fact, the military briefings cited are closely similar to media commentary in basic content, e. g. , Brigadier General John Chaisson, February 3, who described "a real battle," "a very successful offensive in its initial phases," "surprisingly well coor- dinated," "surprisingly intensive," conducted with "a surprising amount of audacity"-for example, in Hue, where "the VC had the town," etc. Naturally
p~Ints
330 APPENDIX 3
the media varied more widely in content and style, but characterizations of the sort cited above must simply be dismissed as hysteria, even apart from the numerous misrepresentations and sheer fabrications.
If this is one of the great achievements of contemporary scholarship, as John Roche claims, then scholarship is in a bad way indeed.
Notes
Preface
I. We use the term "special interests" in its commonsense meaning, not in the Orwellian usage of the Reagan era, where it designates workers, farmers, women, youth, blacks, the aged and infirm, the unemployed-in short, the population at large. Only one group did not merit this appellation: corpora- tions, and their owners and managers. They are not "special interests," they represent the "national interest. " This terminology represents the reality of domination and the operational usage of "national interest" for the two major political parties. For a similar view, with evidence of the relevance of this usage to both major political parties, see Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, Right Turn: The Decline of the Democrats and the Future of American Politics (New York: Hill and Wang, 1986), pp. 37-39 and passim.
2. Herbert Gans, for example, states that "The beliefs that actually make it into the news are professional values that are intrinsic to national journalism and that journalists learn on the job. . . . The rules of news judgment call for ignoring story implications . . . " ("Are U. S. Journalists Dangerously Liberal? " Columbia Journalism Review [Nov. -Dec. 1985], pp. 32-33). In his book Decid- ing What's News (New York: Vintage, 1980), Gans contends that media report-
- nU&. :) AI-All
ers are by and large "objective," but within a framework of beliefs in a set of "enduring values" that include "ethnocentrism" and "responsible capitalism," among others. We would submit that if reporters for Pravda were found to operate within the constraints of belief in the essential justice of the Soviet state and "responsible communism," this would be found to make any further discussion of "objectivity" pointless. Furthermore, as we shall document below, Gans greatly understates the extent to which media reporters work within a limiting framework of assumptions.
3. Neoconservative critiques of the mass media commonly portray them as bastions of liberal, antiestablishment attacks on the system. They ignore the fact that the mass media are large business corporations controlled by very wealthy individuals or other corporations, and that the members of what the neoconservatives describe as the "liberal culture" of the media are hired employees. They also disregard the fact that the members of this liberal culture generally accept the basic premises of the system and differ with other mem- bers of the establishment largely on the tactics appropriate to achieving com- mon ends. The neoconservatives are simply not prepared to allow deviations from their own views. In our analysis in chapter I, we describe them as playing the important role of "enforcers," attempting to browbeat the media into excluding from a hearing even the limited dissent now tolerated. For an analysis of the neoconservative view of the media, see Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead, "Ledeen on the Media," in The Rise and Fall ofthe Bulgarian Connection (New York: Sheridan Square Publications, 1986), pp. 166-70; George Gerbner, "Television: The Mainstreaming of America," in Business and the Media, Conference Report, Yankelovich, Skelly and White, November
19,1981; Gans, "Are U. S. Journalists Dangerously Liberal? "
4. See Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (1921; reprint, London: Allen & Unwin, 1932); Harold Lasswell, "Propaganda," in Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1933); Edward Bernays, Propaganda (New York: H. Liveright, 1928); M. J. Crozier, S. P. Huntington, and J. Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governabi/ity of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission (New York: New York University Press, 1975). For further discussion, see Noam Chomsky, T()'{I)ards a New Cold War (New York: Pantheon, 1982), chapter I. and references cited, particularly, Alex Carey, "Reshaping the Truth: Pragmatists and Propagandists in America," Meanjin Quarterly (Australia), vol. 35, no. 4 (1976).
5. Public Opinion, p. 248. Lippmann did not find this objectionable, as "the common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialized class whose personal interests reach beyond the locality" (p. 310). He was distressed that the incorrigible bias of the press might mislead the "specialized class" as well as the public. The problem, therefore, was how to get adequate information to the decision-making elites (pp. 31-32).
This, he believed, might be accomplished by development of a body of inde- pendent experts who could give the leadership unbiased advice. Lippmann raised no question about possible personal or class interests of the "specialized class" or the "experts" on whom they might choose to rely, on their ability, or their right, to articulate "the common interest. "
6. For example, Claire Sterling and the experts of the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies-Walter Laqueur, Michael Ledeen, and
NOTES TO PAGES xii-xiii 333
;:3;:3- ~. . "" . . . . . . . . . , . . v . . .
Robert Kupperman-have been established as the authorities on terrorism by the mass media; on the Sterling and Paul Henze role in working up the Bulgarian Connection in the plot against the pope, see chapter 4. In the case of Latin America, the media have been compelled to avoid the usual resort to the academic profession for expression of approved opinion, as the profession largely rejects the framework of state propaganda in this instance. It has therefore been necessary to create a new cadre of "experts" (Robert Leiken, Ronald Radosh, Mark Falcoff, Susan Kaufman Purcell, etc. ) to whom they can turn to satisfy doctrinal needs. See Noam Chomsl(y~The Culture of Terrorism (Boston: South End Press, 1988), for examples. On the process ,of creating experts to meet system demands, see our chapter 1 under "Sourcing Mass- Media News. "
7. Like other terms of political discourse, the word "democracy" has a techni- cal Orwellian sense when used in rhetorical flights, or in regular "news report- ing," to refer to U. S. efforts to establish "democracy. " The term refers to systems in which control over resourFes and the means of violence ensures the rule of elements that will serve the needs of U. S. power. Thus the terror states of El Salvador and Guatemala are "democratic," as is Honduras under the rule of the military and oligarchy, and the collection of wealthy businessmen, bankers, etc. , organized by the United States as a front for the Somocista-Ied mercenary army created by the Unite4 States is entitled "the democratic resistance. " See further, chapter 3.
8. In the eighty-five opinion columns on Nicaragua that appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post in the first three months of 1986, during the "national debate" preceding the congressional votes on contra aid, not a single one mentioned this elementary fact. For a detailed review, see Noam Chomsky, "Introduction," in Morris Morley and James Petras, The Reagan
Administration and Nicaragua, Monograph I (New York: Institute for Media Analysis, 1987).
9. Only two phrases in the eighty-five opinion columns cited in the previous footnote mentioned that the Nicaraguan government had carried out reforms; none of them compared Nicaragua with EI Salvador and Guatemala on this important question.
10. See Dianna Melrose, Nicaragua: The Threat ofa Good Example? (Oxford: Oxfam, 1985); see also chapters 3, 5, and 7, below.
II. In an article highly critical of the Reagan "peace plan" for Nicaragua in August 1987, Tom Wicker says, "Whatever his doctrine, the United States has no historic or God-given right to bring democracy to other nations; nor does such a purpose justify the overthrow of governments it does not like" ("That Dog Won't Hunt," New York Times, Aug. 6, I987). Wicker does not contest the claim that Reagan seeks democracy in Nicaragua; it is just that his means are dubious and his plan won't work. We should note that Wicker is at the outer limits of expressible dissident opinion in the U. S. mass media. See further, chapter 3. For additional references and discussion, see Chomsky, Culture of Terrorism.
12. For example, in response to the Guatemala peace accords of August 1987, the United States immediately escalated the supply flights required to keep its forces in Nicaragua in the field to the phenomenal level of two to three per day. The purpose was to undermine the accords by intensifying the fighting,
334 NOTES TO P AGES xiii-3
NOTES TO P AGES 4-5 335
and to prevent Nicaragua from relaxing its guard so that it could be accused of failing to comply with the accords. These U. S. initiatives were by far the most serious violations of the accords, but they were virtually unmentioned in the media. For a detailed review, see Noam Chomsky, "Is Peace at Hand? " Z magazine (January 1988).
13. Jacques Ellul, Propaganda (New York: Knopf, 1965), pp. 58-59.
14. A careful reader of the Soviet press could learn facts about the war in Af- ghanistan that controvert the government line-see chapter 5, pp. 226-27-but these inconvenient facts would not be considered in the West to demonstrate the objectivity ofthe Soviet press and the adequacy ofits coverage ofthis issue.
Chapter 1: A Propaganda Model
I. See note 4 of the preface.
2. Media representatives claim that what the government says is "news- worthy" in its own right. If, however, the government's assertions are transmit- ted without context or evaluation, and without regard to the government's possible manipulative intent, the media have set themselves up to be "managed. " Their objectivity is "nominal," not substantive.
In early October 1986, memos were leaked to the press indicating that the Reagan administration had carried out a deliberate campaign ofdisinformation to influence events in Libya.
